













































































































































Class JRZJL _ 

Book _^S 


iM_E 




* 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 









t 



Bobby and Alice and Pink drew their stools closer and waited 
eagerly for Grandma to begin 


























EARLY CANDLELIGHT 
STORIES 


By 

STELLA C. SHETTER 

14 


Illustrated by 

DOROTHY LAKE GREGORY 



RAND M9NALLY & COMPANY 
CHICAGO NEW YORK 





Copyright, 1922, by 
Rand McNally & Company 
Copyright, I9^4< by 
Rand McNally & Company 





Made in U. S. A 


©C1AS08590 

NOV *1 *24 


/ 

If f 




—h U 


THE CONTENTS 


J- 

A 


PAGE 

Grandma Arrives. 9 

A Whistling Girl. 16 

Chased by Wolves. 23 

The Yellow Gown. 30 

A War Story. 37 

Easter. 45 

At a Sugar Camp. 52 

The New Church Organ. 60 

School Days. 68 

A Birthday Party. 76 

The Locusts.. 83 

The Fourth of July. 92 

The Bee Tree. 99 

Brain Against Brawn. 106 

A Wish That Came True. 114 

Joe’s Infare. 122 

Pumpkin Seed. 130 

A School for Sister Belle. 138 

Andy’s Monument. 146 

Memory Verses. 155 

The Courting of Polly Ann. 163 

Earning a Violin. 171 

At the Fair. 179 


5 

























6 


The Contents 


PAGE 

Hallowe’en. 187 

Measles. 195 

Something to be Thankful for. 203 

Taking a Dare. 210 

Dogs. 218 

The Last Indian. 226 

A Present for Mother. 234 

A Christmas Barring Out. 243 

A Vocabulary . 251 















Grandma's Room ready for the housewarming 


































EARLY CANDLELIGHT 
STORIES 


GRANDMA ARRIVES 

Grandma had come to spend the winter, 
and Bobby and Alice and Pink were watching 
her fix up her room. It was the guest room, 
and the children had always thought it a 
beautiful room, with its soft blue rug, wicker 
chairs, and pretty cretonne draperies. But 
Grandma had had all the furniture taken out, 
and the rug, carefully rolled up and wrapped 
in thick paper to keep the moths out, had 
been carried to the attic. 

Then Grandma—but Mother called Bobby 
and Alice and Pink to come and get their 
wraps and go out to play a while. 

Grandma, seeing them edge reluctantly 
toward the head of the stairs, said cheerfully, 
as she bustled about unpacking the great box 
that held her “things,” “Never mind, dears. 
Run out and play now, and tonight we’ll 
have a regular housewarming. Come to my 


9 


io Early Candlelight Stories 

room at seven o’clock and we will have a 
little party.” 

Just as the clock in the hall downstairs 
struck the first stroke of seven, Alice rapped 
loudly on Grandma’s door. 

Grandma opened the door immediately and 
the children stepped in—then stared in aston¬ 
ishment. They had never seen a room like 
this before. In place of the blue rug was a 
gayly colored rag carpet. The bed, to which 
had been added a feather tick, was twice as 
high as any they had ever seen. It was cov¬ 
ered with a handmade coverlet of blue and 
white. Patchwork cushions were on the 
chairs, and crocheted covers on bureau and 
chiffonier. The windows were filled with 
blooming geraniums, and in one window hung 
a canary in a gilt cage. On a round braided 
rug before the fire lay a gray cat, asleep. By 
a low rocker stood a little table that held a 
work basket running over with bright-colored 
patches, bits of lace, balls of scarlet yam, 
knitting needles, pieces of velvet, silk, and 
wool. On the chiffonier stood a basket filled 
with big, red apples, polished till they shone, 
and beside the apples was a plate covered with 
a napkin. 


Grandma Arrives 


ii 


“Well, well,” said Grandma, “here you are, 
every one of you! Just on time, too. Come 
right in and see my house and meet my family. 
This is Betsy.” She touched the cat gently 
and Betsy lifted her head and started to purr. 
“I raised her from a kitten and brought her 
here in a basket all the way on the train. One 
conductor wouldn’t let me keep her in the 
coach with me, so I went out and rode in the 
baggage car with Betsy.” 

“Did you bring the bird, too?” asked Pink, 
smoothing Betsy’s fur. 

“No, I just got the bird a little while ago. 
He has n’t even a name yet. I thought maybe 
I’d call him Dicky. That’s a nice name for 
a bird, don’t you think so? My baby sent 
me the bird and the flowers, too. Aren’t 
they lovely?” 

“Have you a baby, Grandma?” asked 
Alice, looking around the room wonderingly. 

“Yes, I have a baby, but he isn’t little 
any more. Still he is my baby all the same, 
the youngest of my ten children. Wasn’t it 
thoughtful of him to send me the bird and the 
flowers?” 

Alice and Bobby and Pink looked at one 
another. They knew their daddy had sent 


12 


Early Candlelight Stories 


the flowers, for they had heard Grandma 
thank him for them. The idea of their big, 
broad-shouldered daddy being anyone’s baby 
seemed funny to them, and they giggled. 

“Say, Grandma, he’s some baby, all right,” 
Bobby remarked. 

“You can’t rock him to sleep the way I do 
my baby,” observed Pink. 

“Not now, but I used to,” said Grandma. 
Then she brought three stools from the cor¬ 
ner—low, round stools covered with carpet. 
“You children sit on these stools and I’ll sit 
in this chair and we ’ll spend the evening get¬ 
ting acquainted. You must tell me all about 
yourselves.” 

The children told Grandma about their 
school and their playmates, their dog and 
their playhouse, about how they went camp¬ 
ing in siunmer time and what they did on 
Christmas and Easter, and about the flying 
machine that flew over the town on the 
Fourth of July, and about the Sunday school 
picnic. When they finally stopped, breath¬ 
less, Grandma looked so impressed that 
Bobby said pityingly, “You didn’t have so 
many things to do when you were little, did 
you, Grandma?” 


Grandma Arrives 


i3 


“Well, now, I don’t know about that,” 
Grandma answered slowly. “We didn’t have 
the same things to do, but we had good times, 
too.” 

“Tell us about them,” Alice begged. 

“When I was a little girl,” Grandma began, 
“ I lived in the country on a large farm. All 
around our house were fields and woods. 
You might think I would have been lonely, 
but I never was. You see, I had always lived 
there. Then I had six older brothers and 
sisters, and one brother, Charlie, was just 
two years older than I was. And there were 
so many things to do! The horses to ride to 
water and the cows to bring from the pasture 
field. On cool mornings Charlie and I would 
stand on the spots where the cows had lain 
all night, to get our feet warm before starting 
back home. I had a pet lamb that followed 
me wherever I went, and we had a dog—old 
Duke. He helped us get the cows and kept 
the chickens out of the yard and barked when 
a stranger came in sight. And when the 
dinner bell by the kitchen door rang, how he 
did howl! 

“And the cats! You never saw such cats, 
they were so fat and round and sleek. No 


14 


Early Candlelight Stories 


wonder, for they had milk twice a day out of 
a hollow rock that stood by the barnyard gate. 

“And birds were everywhere. Near the 
well, high in the air, fastened to a long pole, 
was a bird house. Truman and Joe had made 
it, and it was just like a little house, with tiny 
windows and doors and a wee bit of a porch 
where the birds would sit to sun themselves. 

“ Then there were the chickens to look after, 
often a hundred baby chicks to feed and 
put in their coops at night. And in the spring 
what fun we had hunting turkey hens’ nests! 
In February we tapped the sugar trees and 
boiled down the sap into maple sugar and 
sirup. We had Easter egg hunts and school 
Christmas treats, and in the fall we gathered 
in the nuts for winter—chestnuts, hickory 
nuts, walnuts.” 

Grandma paused a moment and glanced at 
the clock on the mantel. 

“Dear me,” she exclaimed in surprise, “see 
what time it is! We must have our refresh¬ 
ments right away. Bobby, will you pass the 
apples? And, Alice, under the napkin are 
some ginger cookies that I brought with me. 
You may pass them, please, and Pink and I 
will be the company. 


Grandma Arrives 


15 


“These apples,” went on Grandma, helping 
herself to one, “ are out of my orchard. I sent 
two barrels of them to your daddy, and every 
night before we go to bed we will each eat one. 
* An apple a day,’ you know, ‘keeps the doctor 
away.' ” 

When they had finished and were saying 
good night, Bobby said, “Lots of things did 
happen when you were a little girl, Grandma. 
I wish you’d tell us more.” 

“Not tonight,” said Grandma, “It’s bed¬ 
time now, but come back some other night. 
If you still want me to tell you more about 
when I was a little girl, tap on my door three 
times, like this, but if you only come to call, 
tap once, like this.” 

Next time we’ll see how often they tapped 
on Grandma’s door. Can you guess? 


A WHISTLING GIRL 

The next evening as Grandma sat before 
the fire knitting on a red mitten, she was 
startled by three sharp knocks on her door. 

“Why, good evening,'* she said, when she 
had opened the door to admit Bobby and 
Alice and Pink. “Here you are wanting a 
story, and I have n’t thought of a thing to 
tell you. Now you tell me what happened at 
school today, and by that time I shall have 
thought of something to tell you.” 

So Alice told Grandma about chapel that 
morning. She told her about the recitations 
and songs by the children and of a lady who 
had whistled “The Star-Spangled Banner” 
and “America.” 

“Well, well, wasn’t that nice!” Grandma 
said. “I should have liked to hear that. 
I always admired to hear any one whistle. I 
believe I ’ll tell you tonight about the time I 
whistled in meeting.” 

The children drew their stools a little closer, 
and Grandma began: 

“When I was a little girl, I wanted more 
than anything else to be able to whistle. I 
16 


A Whistling Girl 


i7 


kept this ambition to myself because it was n’t 
considered ladylike for girls to whistle. My 
mother often said, 

“A whistling girl and a crowing hen 
Always come to some bad end.” 

“So I never told anyone, not even my 
brother Charlie, that I wanted to whistle. 
But when I hunted turkey hens’ nests, or went 
after the cows, or picked berries, I had my 
lips pursed all the time trying to whistle as 
my brothers did. But, though I tried and 
tried, I never succeeded in making a sound. 

“One Sunday in meeting I got awfully 
tired. To a little girl the sermons were very 
long and tiresome in those days. For a while 
I sat still and quiet, watching Preacher Hill’s 
beard jerk up and down as he talked and look¬ 
ing at the queer shadows his long coat tails 
made on the wall. But it was warm and close 
in the church, and after a while I grew drowsy. 

“ 'Oh, dear!’ I thought to myself, 'I 
mustn’t go to sleep. I must keep awake 
somehow.’ Then I thought about whistling. 
I would practice whistling to myself—under 
my breath. 

"The seats were high-backed and we sat 
far to the front. I could not see any one 


2 


Early Candlelight Stories 


except the preacher and John Strang, who 
kept company with sister Belle. John sat 
in a chair at the end of the choir facing the 
congregation, and several times I noticed him 
looking curiously at me as if he wondered 
what I was doing. I would draw in my 
breath very slowly and then let it out again. 
Of course I never dreamed of making a sound, 
and no one could have been more surprised 
than I was when there came from my lips a 
loud clear whistle as sweet as a bird note. 

“The preacher stopped talking. Mother 
looked embarrassed. Father’s face turned 
red with mortification. Sister Belle put her 
handkerchief up to her face, and Charlie sat 
up as straight and stiff as if he had swallowed 
a ramrod. 

“As for me, I wished I could sink through 
the floor and disappear. I thought every¬ 
body was looking right at me. I was sorry 
and I was frightened, too. What would 
Father and Mother say to me? 

“When preaching was over, all of us except 
Mother went right out to the sled and 
wrapped up in comforts and robes for the cold 
ride home. Mother stayed behind to visit 
and invite people home to dinner just as she 


A Whistling Girl 


T 9 



“/ drew in my breath very slowly and then let it out again " 


always did. I was glad when we started. It 
was a dreary ride. Father drove, and he sat 
so stem and silent that no one dared to speak. 

“I hurried right upstairs to change my 
dress as I always did. Then, because I was so 
miserable, I threw myself across my bed and 
cried. I had disgraced Father and Mother. 
Nothing that they could do would be bad 
enough for me. I was aroused by sister Belle’s 
voice. She was complaining to sister Aggie, 
who had stayed at home to get dinner. 

“ ‘I don’t see why Charlie can’t behave 
himself once in a while. Now our whole day 












20 


Early Candlelight Stories 


is spoiled, and I had asked John and Isabel 
for dinner, too. You know how sad it always 
makes Father if he has to punish one of the 
boys, and the worst of it is that Charlie denies 
doing it. I could shake Charlie good myself. 
You can't believe, Aggie, how everyone looked 
at us. I was that ashamed! ’ 

“Charlie being accused in place of me! 
This was something that I had never dreamed 
of. I jumped up and rushed past the two 
giris downstairs, through the empty sitting 
room into the kitchen, where Mother stood 
looking out a window, still in her gray silk 
dress. I caught her hand. 

“ ‘Charlie didn’t do it, Mother,’ I said. 
‘I did it.’ 

“ ‘Oh, Sarah, you cannot whistle, dear,’ 
said Mother reproachfully. She drew me to 
her and smoothed my hair and tried to com¬ 
fort me, but I broke away from her and ran 
into the kitchen chamber where Father sat 
talking to Charlie. Father looked stem and 
Charlie sulky and cross, and no wonder, poor 
boy, for he was guilty of enough things with¬ 
out being accused of something he did not do. 

“ ‘Father!’ I cried wildly. ‘Charlie did 
not whistle in meeting. I did it.’ 


A Whistling Girl 


21 


“ Mother and the girls had followed me, and 
they all, even Charlie, stared at me in amaze¬ 
ment. It was plain they did not believe 
me. They thought I was trying to shield 
Charlie. 

“‘I did whistle,’ I said, crying. ‘I can 
whistle. I tell you I can whistle.’ 

“ ‘Then whistle,’ said Father sternly. 

“And how I did try to whistle! I puffed 
my cheeks and twisted and turned my mouth 
and blew and blew, but I couldn’t make a 
sound, not a single sound. 

“Father looked so hurt and sorry that I 
longed to throw myself into his arms and make 
him believe me. You see, it looked to Father 
as if Charlie and I were both telling stories. 
Father said we were only making things worse 
and ordered us all out of the room. 

“ In the sitting room we found Truman and 
Joe, who had been tending the horses, and 
John and Isabel Strang, who had come 
around past their house to let their family 
out of the sled before coming on to our house 
for dinner. 

“The minute I saw John I drew Mother’s 
head down and whispered to her, ‘Ask John. 
He knows, he saw me do it;’ and Mother in a 


22 


Early Candlelight Stories 


hesitating way said, ‘John, do you know who 
whistled in meeting this morning?’ 

“John turned as red as our old turkey 
gobbler and looked at me. 

“ ‘Why, I feel pretty sure,’ he said, ‘but 
I’d hate to say.’ 

“ ‘Oh, never mind that!’ I burst out. 
‘I’ve told, and they won’t believe I can 
whistle. They think it was Charlie.’ 

“Then, of course, John told all he knew. 
He had been watching me all the time, as I 
had thought, and was looking right at me when 
I whistled. Father was called in, and you 
may be sure he was glad to find that both his 
children had been telling the truth. 

“ ‘It’s all right, Sarah,’ he said, ‘if you 
did n’t mean to.’ But Mother made me 
promise not to try to whistle any more. 

“Well, I declare! I finished just on time. 
Mother’s calling you to bed. Here, don’t 
forget your ‘apple a day.’ Now run along 
like good children, and some other time I’ll 
tell you another story.” 


CHASED BY WOLVES 

“Seems to me you kiddies go to bed earlier 
than you used to,” their father remarked 
one evening when Bobby and Alice and 
Pink interrupted his reading to kiss him 
good night. 

“We don’t go to bed,” Pink explained. 
“We go to Grandma’s room. She tells us a 
story every night.” 

“Why, of course, I remember now. Isn’t 
that fine, though ? A story every night! Did 
she ever tell you a wolf story? Grandma 
knows a pippin of a wolf story. She used 
to tell it to me when I was a little boy. Ask 
her to tell you about the time she was chased 
by wolves.” 

And a few minutes later Grandma began 
the story. 

“ It was in the spring. Father was making 
garden, and he broke the hoe handle. All 
the boys were away from home helping a 
neighbor, so Father wanted Aggie or Belle 
to take the hoe to have a handle put in at the 
blacksmith shop at Nebo Cross Roads a mile 
away. But the girls were getting ready to 


23 


24 


Early Candlelight Stories 


go to a quilting, and I begged to be allowed 
to take the hoe to the blacksmith shop. 

“Mother was afraid at first, but Father 
said there was nothing to hurt me, and Mother 
finally gave in. So right after dinner, carry¬ 
ing the hoe and a poke of cookies to eat if I 
got hungry, I started out. 

“ I was to leave the hoe at the shop and go 
on down the road to Strangs’ to wait till the 
hoe was mended. I can remember yet how 
important I felt going off alone like that. I 
picked wild flowers and munched cookies and 
sang all the songs I knew. 

“Mr. Carson, the blacksmith, said it would 
be a couple of hours before the hoe would be 
ready, and I went down to Strangs’ to wait. 
But when I got there I found the house all 
locked up and no one at home. I sat down on 
the steps to wait for some one to come, but the 
heat and the quiet made me sleepy so I got 
up and moved around the yard. I was lonely 
there by myself. I walked around looking at 
the flowers and the garden and the chickens and 
played a while with a kitten I found sleeping 
in the sun. I thought that afternoon would 
never end. Surely I had been there two hours. 
I started for the blacksmith shop. Maybe it 


Chased by Wolves 


25 


would be closed. I ran all the way. Mr. Carson 
looked surprised when I asked for the hoe. 



I played a while with a kitten 


11 ‘Why, it’s only been a half-hour since 
you went away/ he said. 

“I went back to Strangs’, and this time I 
was determined to wait a long time. After a 
while Isabel Strang came home. She had 
been at the quilting, but all the rest of the 
family had gone away to stay several days. 
Isabel was going to our house to spend the 
night if she got through the evening’s work in 
time. She had come past our house, and 
Mother had told her to keep me all night 











26 Early Candlelight Stories 

with her for company if she could not get 
back before dark and to send me home early 
in the morning. 

“Isabel hurried, and while she milked the 
cows and fed the pigs and chickens and got 
supper I went after the hoe. 

“ It was growing late when we were ready to 
start home, but Isabel said we could make it 
before dark. 

“We followed the road half a mile and then 
took a short cut through the woods up Sugar 
Creek. We had come out of the woods and 
were halfway across a big pasture field when 
from behind us we heard a sound that made 
us stop in terror. We listened. It came 
again. It was the cry of a wolf! I had often 
heard a wolf howl, but I had always been safe 
at home, and even then it had scared me. 

“Again and again came the long drawn- 
out howl from the woods we had just left. 

“Isabel took my hand and we ran as fast 
as we could toward the little creek that ran 
through the field. It had been years and 
years since a pack of wolves had been seen in 
our neighborhood, but before we reached the 
foot-log another howl and another and another 
had been added to the first. 


Chased by Wolves 


27 


“Looking back over my shoulder as I ran, 
I saw a skulking form come out of the woods 
and start across the field. Isabel saw it, too. 

“ ‘We’ll have to stop, Sarah,’ she said. 
‘We’ll have to climb a tree.’ 

“ There was a slender young hickory a little 
this side of the run. Isabel lifted me as high 
as she could and I caught a branch and pulled 
myself up into the tree. I turned to help 
Isabel when, to my horror, I saw that she 
could never make it. A whole pack of wolves 
loping across the field were almost upon her. 

“Catching up the hoe, Isabel ran for the 
foot-log. She had barely reached the middle 
of it when the wolves halted at the creek bank. 
A few of them had stopped at my tree and 
were howling up at me. If all had stopped, it 
would have given Isabel a chance to get into 
one of the trees on the other side of the creek. 

“ But she could n’t do it now. She walked 
back and forth on the log, brandishing the hoe 
in the cruel eyes of the wolves. The wolves 
that had stopped under my tree soon joined 
their friends on the bank, and Isabel called 
out to me, ‘Do not make any noise, Sarah, 
and they will forget you are there.’ I remem¬ 
bered hearing my father tell about some 


28 


Early Candlelight Stories 


wolves that had gnawed a young tree in two, 
and I clung there in fear and trembling. 

“ Isabel held her own all right until one of 
the bolder wolves swam across the creek and 
was soon followed by others. Then Isabel 
had to fight them at both ends of the foot-log. 
It was dark now, and Isabel, striking at the 
wolves from first one side and then the other, 
tried to cheer me up all the time. 

“ ‘Help will soon come, don’t be afraid,’ she 
said over and over again. She even tried to 
make me laugh by saying, ‘Now watch me 
hit this saucy old fellow on the nose. There, 
that surprised you, didn’t it, Mr. Wolf?’ as 
she hit him a sharp blow and he fell back. 

“What if the wolves should leap on Isabel? 
Or she might get dizzy and fall in the water. 
When would help come to us in this lonely, 
out-of-the-way place? My folks would think 
I had stayed the night with Isabel, and there 
was no one at home at Isabel’s. 

“Dared I get down and go for help? I 
peered through the darkness and shook all 
over when I thought that more wolves might 
be hidden there. Hardly knowing what I 
did, I let myself down to the lower limb and 
then dropped with a soft thud to the ground. 


Chased by Wolves 


29 


1 ‘Without waiting a second I started back 
the way we had come. How I ran and ran! 
I was nearly through the woods when I heard 
something running behind me. I went faster 
and it went faster, too. Suddenly I tripped 
and fell and I heard a friendly little whinney 
at my side. It was our pet colt that had been 
running behind me. I put my arm around 
his neck for a second until I got my breath. 
Then I climbed the fence and was on the road. 

I was n’t quite so afraid here as I had been 
in the woods, but I never stopped running 
till I got home. I was so worn out that I 
fell panting on the kitchen floor, but I made 
them understand Isabel’s danger. Father 
and the boys caught up their guns and went 
hurrying across the hill to her aid. 

‘ ‘ They drove the wolves away and brought 
Isabel home in safety, and that was the last 
pack of wolves ever seen around there. 

“ Well, well, see what time it is! Now run 
along to bed and go right to sleep without talk¬ 
ing the least little bit, or I’m afraid Mother 
won’t let you come to see me tomorrow even¬ 
ing. That would be a pity, for I ’ve got the 
best story for tomorrow evening about— 
well, you just wait and see.” 


THE YELLOW GOWN 


The next evening when the children came 
to Grandma’s room Bobby brought his new 
sweater — black with broad yellow stripes — 
to show her. 

“Yellow,” said Grandma admiringly. “I 
always did like yellow, it’s such a cheerful 
color. The first really pretty dress I ever had 
was yellow. 

“It was just about this shade, maybe a 
mite deeper—more of an orange color. It 
was worsted—a very fine piece of all-wool 
cashmere. Until then I had never had any¬ 
thing but dark wool dresses—browns or blues 
made from the older girls’ dresses—and I did 
love bright colors. 

“Sister Belle was to be married in the spring 
and all winter Mother and Belle and Aggie 
had sewed on her new clothes. Nearly every¬ 
thing was ready but the wedding gown, and 
it was to be a present from Father’s younger 
sister, Aunt Louisa, who lived in Clayville. 

“Belle was delighted, because she said 
Aunt Louisa would be sure to pick something 
new and stylish. 


30 


The Yellow Gown 


3i 


“My big brother, Stanley, went to Clay- 
ville one cold, snowy day in February, and 
Aunt Louisa sent the dress goods out by him. 
I remember we were at supper when he came. 
I had the toothache and was holding a bag of 
hot salt to my face and trying to eat at the 
same time. 

“ Mother ran to take Stanley’s bundles and 
help him off with his great-coat, and Aggie 
set a place at the table for him. But before 
he sat down he tossed a package to Belle. 
‘From Aunt Louisa,’ he said. 

“Belle gave a cry of delight and tore the 
package open. Then suddenly the happy 
look faded from her face. She pushed the 
package aside and, laying her head right down 
on the table among the dishes, she burst into 
tears. 

‘ ‘ Aunt Louisa had sent Belle a yellow wed¬ 
ding dress! 

“When Mother held it up for us to see, I 
thought it was the most beautiful color I had 
ever seen and wondered why Belle cried. I 
soon learned. 

“Belle had light brown hair and freckles, 
and yellow was not becoming to her. To 
prove it, she held the goods up to her face. 


32 


Early Candlelight Stories 


“ ‘It does make your hair look dead and 
sort of colorless,’ Aggie agreed. 

“ ‘And your freckles stand out as if they 
were starting to meet a fellow,’ Charlie put in. 

“At this Belle began to cry again, and 
Father said that she did not have to wear a 
yellow dress to be married in if she didn’t 
want to. She should have a white dress. 
But this did n’t seem to comfort Belle a 
bit, for she declared that she would n’t hurt 
Aunt Louisa’s feelings by not wearing the 
yellow. 

“ My tooth got worse, and for the next few 
days I could think of nothing else. Mother 
poulticed my jaw and put medicine in my 
tooth, but nothing helped it. I cried and 
cried and could n’t sleep at night, and Mother 
could n’t sleep. At last she told Father that 
he would have to take me to Clayville to have 
the tooth pulled. There was fine sledding, 
and early the next morning Father and I set 
out. The last thing Mother said to Father, 
as she put a hot brick to my feet and wrapped 
me, head and all, in a thick comfort, was, 
“ ‘As soon as the tooth is out, John, take 
her over to Louisa’s till you get ready to 
start home. 


The Yellow Gown 


33 


“The roads were smooth as glass, Father 
was a fast driver, and it did n’t seem long till 
we got to town. My tooth was soon out— 
it hardly hurt at all—and then Father took 



The roads were smooth as glass, Father was a fast driver 


me to Aunt Louisa’s. We all liked Aunt 
Louisa. She was very fond of children and 
had none of her own. 

“After dinner we sat by the sitting-room 
fire and Aunt Louisa cut paper dolls out of 
stiff writing paper for me and made pink 
tissue paper dresses for them. The dresses 
were pasted on. I could not take them off 
and put them on as Alice and Pink do theirs. 

3 






34 


Early Candlelight Stories 


“As she worked, Aunt Louisa asked me 
about everything at home and about Belle’s 
clothes and the wedding. 

“‘Has she got her wedding dress made 
yet?’ she asked. 

“‘No, ma’am’, I replied, ‘she says she 
can’t bear to cut into it. She hates the 
very sight of it.’ 

“‘Well, I declare!’ exclaimed Aunt Louisa 
in surprise. 

“‘It doesn’t become her,’ I explained 
carefully. ‘She says it makes her look a 
sickly green.’ And then I went on to tell 
Aunt Louisa everything they had all said, 
and ended up with, ‘Belle says she won’t 
hold John to his promise to marry her until 
he has seen her in that yellow dress.’ 

“ ‘ What does she wear it for if she does n’t 
like it?’ asked Aunt Louisa tartly. 

“‘Father said she didn’t have to wear it 
if she did n’t want to, that if she wanted to 
be married in white, he’d get her a white 
dress. But Belle said she would n’t hurt 
your feelings by not wearing it for anything 
in the world.’ 

“Suddenly Aunt Louisa began to laugh. 
She threw her head back and laughed and 


The Yellow Gown 


35 


laughed and laughed. I didn’t know what 
to make of her. 

“‘I think it’s a beautiful color,’ I said 
consolingly. 

“‘And you could wear it, too, with your 
dark hair and eyes and fair skin. What was 
I thinking about to send a color like that to 
poor Belle? I’ll tell you!’ she cried, jump¬ 
ing up and letting my paper dolls fall to 
the floor. ‘I’ll buy another dress for Belle, 
and you shall have the yellow one, Sarah.’ 

“She left me in the kitchen with Mettie, 
the hired girl, while she went over town. 
Mettie was baking cookies, and she let me 
dust the sugar on and put the raisins in the 
middle and I had a real nice time. 

“The second dress was white cashmere 
with bands of pearl trimming and wide 
silk lace for the neck and wrists. 

“When Aunt Louisa kissed me good-by, 
she whispered in my ear, ‘Tell Belle the 
trimming is because she was so thoughtful 
about hurting my feelings and I want her 
to look her best on her wedding day. And, 
Sarah, tell your mother to make up the 
yellow for you with a high shirred waist and 
low round neck. That is the newest style for 


36 Early Candlelight Stories 

children. And be sure to tell her I said not 
to dare put it in the dye pot.’ 

“As soon as we got home I gave the new 
dress to Belle. Mother was astonished, and 
Belle looked ready to cry again, till Father 
told them Aunt Louisa was n’t offended at 
all. Then Mother was pleased, and Belle 
was simply wild about the new dress. 

“'Take the yellow and welcome to it, 
Sarah,’ she said to me when I had told her 
Aunt Louisa wanted me to have it. 

“'I’ll have to color it,’ Mother said, 
‘She couldn’t wear that ridiculous shade.’ 

‘"No, no, Mother, please don’t!’ I cried. 
‘Aunt Louisa said not to dye it. She 3 aid 
it would become me the way it is.’ 

“‘Tush, tush!’ said Mother severely, ‘You 
are too little to talk of things becoming 
you.’ But she didn’t dye it, and a few 
weeks later at sister Belle’s wedding I wore 
the yellow dress made just the way Aunt 
Louisa said to make it. 

“And now, ‘To bed, to bed, says sleepy 
head,’ and we’ll have another story some 
other night.” 


A WAR STORY 


“Well, well,’’ said Grandma one evening 
when Bobby and Alice and Pink came to 
her room for their usual bedtime story, “I 
don’t know what to tell you about tonight.” 

“Tell us a war story,” suggested Bobby 
eagerly. 

“Maybe I might tell you a war story,” 
agreed Grandma, “a war story of a time 
long ago.” And she picked up her knitting 
and began slowly: 

“When the Civil War broke out I was a 
very little girl. Of course there had been 
lots of talk of war, but the first thing I 
remember about it was when we heard that 
Fort Sumter had been fired on. It was a 
bright, sunshiny morning in the spring. I 
was helping Father rake the dead leaves off 
the garden when I saw a man coming up the 
road on horseback. I told Father, and he 
dropped his rake and went over to the fence. 
In those days it was n’t as it is now. News 
traveled slowly—no telephones, no trains, 
no buggies. And this young man, who had 
been to Clayville to get his marriage license, 


37 


38 Early Candlelight Stories 

brought us the news that Fort Sumter had 
been fired on. 

“Father went straight into the house to 
tell Mother, and after a while he and my 
big brother, Joe, saddled their horses and 
rode away. I thought they were going right 
off to war and started to cry, and then I 
laughed instead when our big Dominique 
rooster flew up on the hen-house roof, flapped 
his wings, and crowed and crowed. A great 
many men and boys rode by our house that 
day on their way to Clayville, and when 
Father and Joe came back next day Joe 
had volunteered and been accepted and he 
stayed at home only long enough to pack 
his clothes and say good-by to us. 

“There wasn’t much sleep in our house 
that night, and I lay in my trundle-bed, 
beside Father’s and Mother’s bed, and lis¬ 
tened to them talking, talking, until I thought 
it must surely be morning. I went to sleep 
and wakened again and they were still talk¬ 
ing. Finally I could hear Father’s regular 
breathing and knew that he had gone to 
sleep at last. In a little bit Mother slipped 
out of bed and went into the hall. I thought 
she was going for a drink and followed her, 


A War Story 


39 


but she went into Stanley’s room, which 
had been Joe’s room, too, until that night. 

“ Mother bent over Stanley and spoke his 
name softly and he wakened and started up 
in bed. 

“‘What is it, Mother?’ he whispered, 
frightened. 

“‘Stanley,’ Mother said slowly, ‘I want 
you to promise me that you won’t go to war 
without my consent.’ 

“Stanley laughed out loud in relief. 

“‘Gee, Mother, you gave me a scare!’ he 
said. ‘I thought some one was sick or some¬ 
thing. The war ’ll be over long before I’m old 
enough to go.’ He was going on sixteen then. 

“‘It won’t do any harm to promise then,’ 
Mother persisted, and Stanley promised. 

‘ ‘ I crept back to bed and pulled the covers 
up over my head. 

“But Stanley was mistaken about the war 
being over soon. The war did n’t stop. It 
went on and on. Two years and more passed, 
and Stanley was eighteen. Boys of that age 
were being accepted for service, but Stanley 
never said a word about volunteering. 

“Shortly after his eighteenth birthday 
there came a change in him. He was not 


40 


Early Candlelight Stories 


like himself at all. He had always been a 
lively boy, full of fun and mischief, but now 
he was very quiet. He never mentioned the 
war any more, and often dashed out of the 
room when every one was talking excitedly 
about the latest news from the battlefield. 
He avoided the soldiers home on furlough, 
did n’t seem to care to read Joe’s letters, and 
as more and more of his friends enlisted he 
became gloomy and downhearted. 

“We could all see as time went on that 
Father was disappointed in Stanley. He 
was always saying how much better it was 
for a young man to enlist than to wait for 
the draft. The very word ‘draft’ had for 
Father a disgraceful sound. 

“I think Mother must have thought it 
was Stanley’s promise to her that was worry¬ 
ing him, for one day she came out to the bam 
where Stanley was shelling corn and I was 
picking out the biggest grains to play ‘Fox 
and Geese’ with. Mother told Stanley she 
released him from his promise, but he did n’t 
seem glad at all. He only said, ‘Don’t you 
worry, Mother, I’m not going to war.’ 

“‘I was troubled about Joe that night,’ 
Mother said. ‘I thought I couldn’t bear 


A War Story 


4i 


for you to go, too. But you are older now 
and you must do what you think best.’ 



One day two recruiting officers came out to Nebo Cross Roads 


“As Mother went out of the barn there 
were tears in her eyes and I knew in that 
moment that she would rather have Stanley 
go to war than have him afraid to go. 

“They were forming a new company in 
Clayville, and one day two recruiting officers 
came out to Nebo Cross Roads. Father let 
Truman take Charlie and me over to see 
them. It was raining, and I can see those 
two men yet standing there in the rain. One 
had a flute and the other had a drum. They 























42 


Early Candlelight Stories 


played reveille and taps and guard mount 
and ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ and a new 
song we had never heard before, ‘Tenting 
on the Old Camp Ground.’ And how that 
music stirred the folks! They had to use 
two wagons to haul the recruits into Clayville 
that night. 

“That evening when I was hunting eggs 
in the barn I found Stanley lying face down 
in the hay. He was crying! I could hardly 
believe my eyes. I went a little nearer and 
I saw for sure that his shoulders were shaking 
with sobs. But even while I watched him 
he got to his feet and began rubbing his 
right arm. I often saw Stanley working 
with his arm. He would rub it and swing 
it backward and forward and strike out with 
his fist as if he were going to hit some one 
a blow. He did n’t mind me watching him, 
and I never told anyone about it. He had 
broken that arm the winter before, and I 
had often seen him working with it after he 
had stopped wearing it in a sling. 

“I wondered to myself why, if Father and 
Mother thought Stanley was afraid to fight, 
they did not ask him and find out. He 
knew why he did n’t enlist—he could tell 


A War Story 


43 


them. At last I decided if they would n’t 
do it themselves I’d do it for them. So the 
next time I was alone with Stanley, I said, 
‘Stanley, are you afraid to go to war?’ 

“‘Afraid!’ he cried angrily, ‘Who said I 
was afraid?’ Then his tone changed. ‘They 
don’t want me. They won’t have me. It’s 
this arm,’ and he held his right arm out and 
looked at it in a disgusted sort of way. 
‘They claim it’s stiff, but I could shoot if 
they would only give me a chance. I’ve 
tried three times to get in, but there’s no use 
worrying Mother about it since I can’t go. 
But my arm is getting better. It’s not 
nearly as stiff as it was. I’ll get in yet.’ 
Then he looked at me scornfully and said, 
‘Afraid! Afraid nothing!’ 

“I ran as fast as ever I could to find 
Father and Mother and tell them. Mother 
hugged me and laughed and cried at the same 
time and said she always knew it, and Father 
made me tell over to him three times, word 
for word, every single thing Stanley had said. 

“‘He must never know,’ Mother said. 
‘He must never suspect for a minute that 
we thought he did n’t want to go, the poor 
dear boy, keeping his trouble to himself for 


44 Early Candlelight Stories 

fear of worrying us.' And she told me to 
get Charlie and catch a couple of chickens 
to fry for supper. Then I knew she was 
happy again, for whenever Mother was 
happy or specially pleased with one of us 
she always had something extra good to eat. 

“Pass the apples, Alice, please, and tomor¬ 
row night if you’re real good and don’t get 
kept in at school I’ll tell you—well, you 
just be real good and you’ll see what I’ll 
tell you about.” 


EASTER 


It was the night before Easter. Grandma 
had told Bobby and Alice and Pink of the 
first Easter, and had explained about the 
egg being the symbol of life because it con¬ 
tains everything necessary for the awakening 
of new life. 

“When I was a little girl,” she said, “we 
had lots of chickens and of course we had 
lots of eggs. We got so many eggs that we 
could not use them all—not even if Mother 
made custards and omelets and angel cake 
every day. 

“ Father or the boys would take the eggs 
we did not need to the store and trade them 
for sugar or coffee or pepper or rice. But 
for quite a while before Easter they did not 
take any eggs to the store. 

“It was a custom for the children to hide 
all the eggs that were laid for a couple of 
weeks before Easter. Father and Mother 
had done it when they were little, and all 
the boys and girls who went to our school 
did it, too. We would bring them in Easter 
morning and count them. Each of us might 


45 


46 Early Candlelight Stories 

keep the eggs we found to sell, and Father 
always gave a fifty-cent piece to the one 
who had the most eggs. Even the big boys 
and Aggie and Belle hid eggs, for money 
was scarce and sometimes the egg money 
amounted to a good deal. We were allowed 
to keep all the eggs we found, no matter to 
whom they belonged and how we hunted. 

“We searched in the hen house, the barn, 
the haymow, in old barrels and boxes, in 
fence comers, and even in the wood-box 
behind the kitchen stove. One spring a 
brown leghorn hen slipped into the kitchen 
every other day and laid in the wood-box. 
You never could tell where a hen might 
lay, so we looked every place we could 
think of. 

“It was an early spring. The trees were 
bursting into leaf, the grass was green, the 
beautiful yellow Easter flowers in the front 
yard were in bloom. Best of all, the hens 
had never been known to lay so many eggs 
before. 

“It seemed that every one of us wanted 
something that the egg money would buy. 
Truman was going away to school, and 
he wanted books. Belle was going to be 


Easter 


47 


married, and she wanted all the money she 
could get for pretty clothes. Stanley wanted 
a new saddle for his courting colt. When the 
boys turned eighteen, Father gave each one 
of them a colt to tame and break and have 
for his own, and they were called the court¬ 
ing colts. I wanted the egg money for a 
lovely wax doll like one I had seen in a store 
in Clayville, and if Charlie got it he meant 
to spend it for a gun. Aggie wanted to buy 
a pair of long lace mitts to wear to Belle’s 
wedding. So we all hunted and hunted, 
each one thinking of what he would buy 
with the money. 

“Once for three days I didn’t have an 
egg. Then I found a great basketful that 
was so heavy I could hardly carry it to a new 
hiding place, and the next day it was gone. 
So it went on till Easter. 

“Charlie and I were up bright and early 
on Easter morning—not as early as on 
Christmas, of course. As we all brought in 
our eggs Father counted them. The kitchen 
floor was covered with baskets and buckets 
and boxes of eggs. You never saw so many 
eggs. Charlie had the most, and he was as 
happy as happy could be. 


4 8 


Early Candlelight Stories 


“While Mother and the girls finished 
getting breakfast, Charlie and I hunted for 
the colored eggs. Under beds, behind doors, 
in the cupboards, all over the house we 
hunted. 

“‘Here they are!' shouted Charlie from 
the spare chamber. And there they were 
behind the bureau—red eggs, blue eggs, 
green eggs, big sugar eggs, and eggs with 
pretty pictures pasted on them and tied 
with gay ribbons. And there were white 
eggs that looked just like common hen’s 
eggs, but when you broke a tiny bit of the 
shell and put your tongue to it, my, oh my! 
but that maple sugar was delicious! 

“After breakfast there was a rush to get 
the work done and get ready for meeting. 
Dear knows how many people would come 
home to dinner with us. Mother always 
asked everyone home to dinner. 

“We were nearly ready. Mother had 
picked the lovely, yellow Easter flowers and 
was wrapping the stems in wet paper to keep 
them from wilting till we got to the church— 
she meant to put them in a vase on the 
pulpit stand—when Father came in and 
said that the widow Spear’s new house had 


Easter 


49 


burned down in the night. There was some¬ 
thing the matter with the chimney, no one 
knew just what. 

11 Mr. Abraham Harvey had told Father. 
The Spear family had taken refuge in a little 
old house that they had lived in before they 
built the new house. But of course they had 
nothing to keep house with, and Mr. Harvey 
was going around in a big wagon collecting 
things. There were some pieces of old furni¬ 
ture in the wagon, and several bundles of 
bedclothes and a box of dishes. 

“Father gave flour and meat and potatoes 
and a ham. Mother emptied the shelves of 
our Easter pies and took the chicken in the 
pot right off the stove, besides giving bread 
and a crock of apple butter. 

“Then she wrapped up a pair of blankets 
she had woven herself and sent Charlie and 
Truman to carry out some chairs and a 
bedstead that were up in the meat-house 
loft. Belle and Aggie were sorting out some 
old clothes to send, and I wanted to do 
something, too. 

“As I was going through the kitchen on 
an errand for Mother, I noticed the eggs. 
Such a lot of them—nearly fifty dozen, and 


4 


50 


Early Candlelight Stories 


they brought ten cents a dozen. Just then 
Charlie passed the door carrying a chair, 
and I called to him. 

“‘ Charlie,’ I said, ‘would you give your 
egg money if I gave mine?’ 

“‘No,’ he said at once, ‘I won’t give my 
egg money. Not on your life, I won’t! 
Father and Mother’ll give enough,’ and he 
went out. 

“I didn’t say any more about the egg 
money. I did n’t think it would be fair to 
Charlie, since he was the one who had the 
most eggs. I went upstairs to Mother’s 
room and took my gold breastpin out of 
the fat pincushion on her bureau. 

“‘Here is my breastpin, Mother,’ I said. 
‘Send it to Millie. Everything she’ll get 
will be so plain and ugly.’ 

“Aggie and Belle laughed. 

“‘A breastpin,’ said Aggie, ‘when very 
likely she has no dress!’ 

“‘It’s all right, Sarah,’ said Mother, and 
she went to her bureau drawer and took out 
a fine linen handkerchief and laid it on the 
bed beside the breastpin. When she came 
to get them, Aggie had given a carved back 
comb and Belle a pretty lace collar. 


Easter 


5i 


“Mr. Harvey was starting his horses and 
Father had come inside the gate when 
Charlie ran around the house. 

‘“Give them my egg money, Father!' he 
called and ran out of sight again. Then all 
the rest of us said we would give our egg 
money, too, and it made a lot—over five 
dollars. 

‘“I'm proud of you,' Mother said when 
she had hunted Charlie up and was tying 
his necktie. ‘I'm proud of every one of 
my children.' 

“We were a little late to meeting, and 
when we got home Belle had dinner ready — 
ham meat and cream gravy and mashed 
potatoes and hot biscuits. Mother brought 
out a plate of fruit cake that she kept in 
a big stone jar for special occasions—the 
longer she kept it the better it got—and a 
dish of pickled peaches for dessert." 

“Mm! mm! Wish I’d been there," sighed 
Bobby. 

“And next time," Grandma went on, “I 
think—yes, I'm pretty sure—that I’ll tell 
you how the maple sugar got in the Easter 
eggs." 


AT A SUGAR CAMP 


“ Grandma,” said Alice the next evening, 
“you said you’d tell us how the sugar got 
in the Easter egg.” 

“And so I will,” answered Grandma. 
“I’ll tell you about that this very evening. 
Where’s my knitting? I can talk so much 
better when I knit. There now, are you all 
ready?” 

Bobby and Alice and Pink drew their stools 
closer and Grandma began: 

“On my father’s farm, about half a mile 
from our house, was a grove of maple trees. 
We always called them sugar trees. In the 
spring, you know, the sweet juice or sap 
comes up from the roots into the trees, and 
it is from this sap that maple sirup and 
sugar are made. In the spring Father and 
the boys would tap our sugar trees. They 
would take elder branches and make spouts 
by removing the pithy centers. Then they 
would bore holes in the trees and put the 
spouts in the holes and place buckets under¬ 
neath to catch the sap. These buckets would 
have to be emptied several times* a day 


52 


At a Sugar Camp 


53 


into the big brass kettle, where it was boiled 
down into sirup and sugar. 

“ Truman tended to the sap buckets and 
kept a supply of firewood on hand, and 
Stanley watched the boiling of the sap. He 
knew just when it was thick enough and 
sweet enough to take off for sirup and how 
much longer to cook it for sugar. One of 
the girls was always there to help, and 
Father or Mother would oversee it all. 

“ There was a one-roomed log cabin with 
a great fireplace in the maple grove. It 
had been built years and years before by 
some early settler and was never occupied 
except during sugar-making time. The girls 
would go up the week before and clean it 
out, and Mother would send dishes and bed¬ 
clothes for the two rough beds built against 
the wall. The ones making and tending the 
sirup would camp up there. 

“Mother would send butter and bread 
and pies, and the girls would boil meat or 
beans in a black iron pot that hung over 
the fire. In the evenings they would have 
lots of fun sitting in front of the fire, telling 
stories and popping corn. Sister Aggie could 
make the best popcorn balls that were put 


54 Early Candlelight Stories 

together with maple sirup. They would 
often have visitors, too, neighboring boys 
and girls who would come in to stay until 
bedtime. And there would be songs and 
games. 

“And they would make the sugar eggs for 
Easter. Before sugar time came we would 
blow the contents out of eggs by making 
little holes in each end. Then we would dry 
the shells and put them away. When they 
were taking off the maple sugar, Mother or 
Belle or Aggie would fill the egg shells and 
set them aside for the sugar to cool and 
harden. They would fill goose-egg shells 
with the maple sugar, too, and when the 
sugar hardened they would pick the shell 
off, and by and by the girls would paste 
pretty pictures of birds or flowers on them 
and tie them with gay-colored ribbons for 
Easter. 

“Neither Charlie nor I had ever been 
allowed to stay all night at the sugar camp, 
and when Mother said we could stay one 
night with Stanley and Truman and Belle 
we were wild with joy. 

“Truman had shot and cleaned three 
squirrels that morning, and Belle cooked 


At a Sugar Camp 


55 


them in the big black pot with a piece ' of 
fat pork until the water boiled off and they 
sizzled and browned in the bottom of the 
pot. We had little flat corn cakes baked 
on the hearth and maple sirup, and, my, 
but that supper tasted good to me! 

“I dried the dishes for Belle, and we had 
just settled down for the evening when one 
of the Strang boys c.ame in. He did n’t 
know we children were there, and he had 
come up to see if Stanley and Truman and 
Belle would go home with him to a little 
frolic. His sister Esther had been married 
a few days before and had come home that 
afternoon, and they were going to have a 
serenade for them. Belle and the boys wanted 
Charlie and me to go down to the house so 
they could go, but we would n’t do it. We 
declared we were not afraid to stay by 
ourselves and told them to go on. Finally 
they did. 

“Charlie and I did n’t‘mind being left 
alone at all. We thought it was great fun. 
For a while we played we were pioneers. 
Then Charlie got tired of that and wanted 
to play Indian, so we played Indian for a 
long time. But we had been out all day in 


56 


Early Candlelight Stories 


the cold, and after a while we got sleepy 
and decided to go to bed. I went to the 
window to see if Belle and the boys were 
coming. There was a moon, and I could 
see the trees with their spouts and the 
buckets under them. I looked closely. At 
one of the buckets was a black shadow. I 
looked and looked at it and just then it 
moved a little. 

Charlie,' I cried excitedly, ‘Brierly’s 
old black dog is out there drinking up our 
sap!’ 

“Charlie gave one hurried glance out the 
winddw, then he picked up a stick of fire¬ 
wood and opened the door. 

“‘I bet I give that dog a good scare,’ he 
said, and rushed out the door and made 
straight for the black shadow. He raised 
the stick and brought it down ker-plunk on 
the back of what we thought was Brierly’s 
dog. But it was n’t Brierly’s dog at all, nor 
anybody’s dog. It was a bear! I don’t 
know which was the most surprised, Charlie 
or the bear. Charlie darted back to the 
cabin, and when he reached the door he 
threw his stick with all his might and hit 
the bear on the nose. The nose is the bear’s 


At a Sugar Camp 


57 


tenderest point, you know. Charlie must 
have hurt him, for he gave a growl, backed 
away from the sap bucket, and scampered 
up the nearest tree. Maybe he meant to 



Up the tree the hear stayed while Charlie and I watched him 


wait a while and come back for more sap, 
I don’t know. Anyway, up the tree he 
stayed while Charlie and I watched him 
through the window. 

“ ‘If we could only keep him up the tree 
till the boys come home from Strangs’ one 
of them could get a gun and kill him,’ 
said Charlie, ‘and we’d get the money for 
his pelt.’ 


























58 


Early Candlelight Stories 


“‘Father says wolves won’t come near a 
fire,’ I remarked, and that gave Charlie an 
idea. He would build a fire and keep the 
bear treed until the boys came. 

“At first I wouldn’t agree to help him. 
I was too afraid. But Charlie coaxed and 
threatened and was getting ready to do it 
himself. So I helped him carry out the first 
burning log from the fireplace in the cabin. 
After that my part was to watch the bear 
and warn Charlie if he moved while Charlie 
built up the fire. Once as the fire grew 
warmer and the smoke got thicker and 
thicker the bear snorted and moved to a 
limb higher up. 

“Charlie kept a roaring fire going, and it 
was n’t long until Belle and the boys came 
rushing up all out of breath from running. 
They were nearly scared to death because 
they had seen the smoke and thought the 
cabin was on fire. 

“At first they wouldn’t believe we had a 
bear treed. Truman said, ‘Whoever heard 
of a bear climbing a tree like that?’ But 
Stanley said nobody knew what a bear 
might do, and Charlie said that there was the 
bear all right, they could see for themselves. 


At a Sugar Camp 


59 


“Truman went home and got his gun and 
shot the bear. It turned out to be a young 
bear. Father sold the pelt and divided the 
money between Charlie and me. 

“Now, let me see, what shall I tell you 
about tomorrow night? Oh, I know! I ’ve 
thought of something, but I won’t tell. No, 
indeed, not a word till tomorrow night.” 


THE NEW CHURCH ORGAN 


Grandma had been to church Sunday 
morning and heard for the first time the 
wonderful new pipe organ, and in the 
evening she was talking about it—how 
beautiful the music was, how solemn, how 
sacred. 

“And when I think,” she said, “of the 
opposition there was to the first little organ 
we had in our church and of the trouble 
we had getting it—well, well, times certainly 
have changed. 

“It was like this. Some of our people 
were bitterly opposed to organ music in 
church and right up till the last minute did 
. everything they could to keep us from get¬ 
ting an organ. This made it very hard to 
raise money for the organ, but after a long 
time we got enough—all but about forty 
dollars. It was decided to have a box 
social to raise this. 

“At a box social each girl or woman 
took a box containing enough supper for 
two people. Then the boxes were auctioned 


60 


The New Church Organ 61 

off, and the men and boys bought them 
and ate supper with the girl whose box 
they got. 

“ Aggie and Belle trimmed their boxes 
with colored tissue paper and flowers and 
ribbon, but Mother just wrapped hers in 
plain white tissue paper and fastened a bunch 
of pinks out of the garden on top so Father 
would know it when it was put up to be 
sold. Father was going to buy Mother’s 
box, and I was going to eat with them. 
Charlie had money to buy a box for himself, 
and he said he meant to buy Aunt Livvy 
Orbison’s box because she always had so 
much to eat. 

“ Every one in the family was going, and 
there was a great rush and bustle to get 
ready. Mother cut Charlie’s hair and oiled 
it and curled mine. She scrubbed us till 
we shone, and at last, dressed in our best 
clothes, we started. 

“ Father and Mother and Belle and Aggie 
and I went in the surrey. All the boys 
walked over the hill, except Joe, who had 
gone to Clayville on business for Father 
that morning and was to stop at the church 
on his way home. 


62 


Early Candlelight Stories 


“It was a lovely warm evening, and there 
was a large crowd at the church when 
we got there, though it was early. The 
girls took their boxes in and then came right 
out again. Every one was having a splendid 
time, talking and laughing and visiting 
around. 

“I was with Father. After a while I got 
tired hearing the men talk about the crops 
and the price of wool and the election, and 
I went to hunt Mother. I looked all around 
and I could n’t find her. I thought maybe 
she had gone into the church, so I went in 
there to look for her, but there was no one 
in the church at all. The boxes had been 
piled on the pulpit and covered with a sheet 
so that no one could see them. Just as I 
was going out the door I noticed that the 
sheet was lying on the floor and the boxes 
were nowhere to be seen. I went on out 
and presently I found sister Belle. She was 
talking to John and Isabel Strang and Will 
Orbison. 

“I tugged at Belle’s dress and pulled her 
to one side. 

“‘What did they do with the boxes?’ I 
asked her. 


The New Church Organ 


63 


“‘Why, they put them in the church, and 
after a while they will sell them,’ she said. 
‘You run and find Mother now, like a good 
girl.’ 

“‘But the boxes aren’t on the pulpit,’ I 
whispered. ‘I was in the church hunting 
Mother, and the boxes are all gone and the 
sheet is lying on the floor.’ 

“Belle told the others, and they all went 
hurrying into the church, I following after. 
The boxes were gone, sure enough. The 
pulpit windows, which faced a strip of woods, 
were open. The boys said the boxes could 
have been taken out that way as the crowd 
was in front of the church. There was no 
place in the church to hide them. There 
was a loft, but it was entered through a hole 
in the ceiling and there was no ladder. 
Belle placed two chairs with their seats 
touching and covered them with the sheet 
so that no one could tell the boxes were not 
there. 

“‘It looks as if some of the people who 
don’t want the organ have spoiled this box 
supper,’ said John Strang, ‘and they will 
keep us from having our organ for a while, 
too.’ 


64 


Early Candlelight Stories 


‘“But that isn’t the worst of it,’ put in 
Isabel. ‘It’ll cause no end of trouble and 
hard feelings.’ 

“ ‘ It may have been some of the boys who 
did it for a joke,’ said Belle. ‘Let us raise 
the money anyway and get ahead of them.’ 

“‘But how,’ Isabel asked anxiously, ‘with 
no boxes?’ 

“Then they thought out their plan. It 
was that John and Will were to go out and 
explain quietly to the boys in favor of the 
organ what had happened and get them to 
give the money they meant to spend on 
their boxes to John. Brother Joe had bought 
a new pair of shoes in town. They would 
put his shoe box up for sale just as if all 
the rest of the boxes were still under the 
sheet. Will was to bid against John and 
run the box up to the amount they had 
collected. 

“Isabel stayed in the church to see that 
no one disturbed the sheet, and John and 
Will and Belle went outside to carry out 
their plan. I found Mother, and pretty soon 
we went into the church. The lamps had 
been lit, and I thought how nice it looked. 
The girls had come up the day before and 


The New Church Organ 


65 


swept the floor and dusted the benches and 
shined the tin reflectors on the lamps, and 
put great bunches of flowers and ferns over 
the doors and windows and covered the two 
big round stoves with boughs of evergreen. 
There was a short program first, and then 
Stanley, who was to auction off the boxes, 
stepped to the front of the pulpit and 
held up a plain white box tied with stout 
string. 

“‘How much am I offered for this box?’ 
he said. 

“The bidding started at twenty-five cents. 
At first there were lots of bids, but finally 
every one dropped out but John and Will. 
There was n’t a sound in the church as the 
bidding went higher and higher—thirty dol¬ 
lars for that plain, white box, thirty-five 
dollars, forty dollars, forty-one dollars. Will 
stopped bidding and the box went to John 
for forty-one dollars. 

“Some one called out, ‘Open the box!’ 
and that started things. ‘Open the box!’ 
they shouted. ‘Open it!’ ‘Let’s see what’s 
in it!’ ‘Open, open, open!’ 

“When they quieted down a little, Stanley 
explained about the boxes disappearing and 


5 


66 


Early Candlelight Stories 


everything. Then he untied the string, took 
the lid off the box, and held up a pair of 



Stanley held up a pair of men's shoes 


men’s shoes number ten. Then that crowd 
went wild. They clapped and shouted and 
yelled. Stanley said he thought the boxes 
had been taken for a joke and suggested that 
they be returned. 

“‘We have enough money for the organ,’ 
he said. ‘Now let us have our suppers and 
some fun.’ 

“One of the boys on the side opposing the 
organ got up and said that the boxes had 
been taken for a joke and would immediately 






The New Church Organ 


67 


be returned. And you could n’t guess where 
those boxes were hidden! Right in the big 
round stoves there in the church! Of course 
everybody laughed again and laughed and 
laughed. Such a good-humored crowd you 
never saw. 

“They handed out the boxes first to the 
people who had paid in their money, and 
sold the others. There were n’t enough boxes 
to go around, but each had plenty in it for 
three or four people. Every one divided, 
and there was not a person in the church 
who did not get something to eat. People 
who had been in favor of the organ ate out 
of the same boxes with those who had been 
against it and forgot that they had ever 
disagreed. And when the organ came and 
sister Aggie played it that first Sunday, why, 
it sounded sweeter to me than that beautiful 
big organ in your church did this morning. 

“And now, '’night, ’night,’ everybody, 
and next time I think — yes. I’m pretty 
pretty sure — next time we’ll have something 
about my school.” 


SCHOOL DAYS 


“All my brothers and sisters had liked to 
go to school,” Grandma began the next 
evening, ' “ and in the sitting room, after 
supper, Father would hear their lessons while 
Mother knitted or sewed or darned. Father 
had read books and papers aloud to us as 
long as I could remember, and he always 
told us how important education was. So 
as soon as I got to be six years old I was 
anxious to start to school. 

“I was small for my age, and as we lived 
two miles from the schoolhouse and the 
snow in winter was often two or three feet 
deep, Mother did not want me to go until 
I was seven or eight years old. She said 
she and Father could teach me at home for 
a couple of years yet, but I coaxed and 
coaxed to go. At last Mother said I could 
go as long as the weather was good. 

“So on the very first day — it was along 
toward the last of October—I started down 
the road with a brand new primer under 
my arm and a lunch basket of my very own 
and shiny new shoes. Mother stood at the 


68 


School Days 


69 


front gate to watch me out of sight and 
wave when I came to the turn in the road. 

“Our schoolhouse wasn’t like yours. It 
was just a little frame building painted red. 
There were no globes or books or maps or 
pictures to make learning interesting. Just 
rough, scarred benches, a water bucket and 
a dipper on a shelf in one corner, and a big 
round stove in the center of the room, and 
of course the teacher’s desk and chair on 
the platform up in front. 

“The teacher was usually a man, but that 
winter it was a woman—Miss Amma Morton. 
Miss Amma was a tall, bony woman with 
snapping, black eyes that saw everything, 
and thin gray hair combed straight back 
from her face. She wore a brown alpaca 
dress with a very full gathered skirt and 
black and white calico aprons and a little 
black shoulder shawl fastened with a gold 
brooch. 

“She lived with a married sister who 
had a very large family. In those days 
all the stockings and socks were knitted 
at home, and Miss Amma did the knitting 
for her sister’s family. She did it in school. 
She would sit at the stove or at her desk and 


70 


Early Candlelight Stories 


knit and knit on long gray stockings or 
on red mittens. She would knit all day 
while she heard our lessons. The only time 



Miss Amma would knit all day while she heard our lessons 


she could n’t knit was when she set our 
copies. We had no copy books, and the 
teacher had to write the copies out for us. 

“ I liked to go to school. It was fun to 
peep into my lunch basket at recess to see 
what Mother had put in and maybe slip 
out a piece of pie or cake to eat. I liked to 
make playhouses on the big flat rocks with 
Annie Brierly and the other little girls, and 
hunt soft, green moss to furnish them with, 











School Days 


7i 


and smooth pebbles down at the run. I 
loved to learn my A B C’s and listen to the 
older children recite, and at noon and recess 
to play ‘ Prisoners’ Base’ and ‘Copenhagen/ 
But school was n’t always so pleasant. 

“One day not long after I started there 
was a heavy wind and rain storm. We 
could n’t recite our lessons, the rain made 
so much noise on the roof. Through the 
windows we could see the trees swaying 
this way and that in the wind. 

“At afternoon recess Annie and I ran out 
to see if our playhouses had been spoiled by 
the rain. When we came back the girls 
were standing around in little excited groups. 
They told us that the roof had blown off 
Bowser’s house—they lived about half a 
mile down the road—and that most of the 
boys had gone to see it. 

“‘Did Charlie go?’ I asked eagerly. 

“ ‘ I reckon he did,’ one of the girls answered. 
‘ He was with the other boys and they went 
that way. I would n’t be in their boots for 
anything. They won’t be back before books, 
and Teacher’ll whip them if they’re late.’ 

“I drew Annie away. ‘I’m going after 
Charlie,’ I told her. ‘I’m going to take the 


72 Early Candlelight Stories 

short cut across the hill and catch up to him 
and bring him back.’ 

“ Annie said she would go with me, and 
we started. The ground was wet and it 
was hard walking. We slipped at every 
step. After I thought about it a little, I 
was not at all sure that Charlie would thank 
me for coming. Maybe he’d sooner take a 
whipping than miss seeing a house without 
a roof. Boys are so different from girls 
that way. 

“We got clear to Bowser’s without seeing 
a sign of a single boy, and the roof wasn’t 
off at all—just a little comer of it. Mr. 
Bowser was nailing it up as fast as ever he 
could. He said none of the boys had been 
there, so we started back. 

“That was the longest walk I ever took. 
I thought we’d never get to the school- 
house. My feet were wet and my legs 
ached and I was so tired I could hardly 
move. When we got to the top of the hill 
and looked down at the schoolhouse, there 
was no one in sight. Recess was over! 
We reached the door at last and stood 
trembling outside, afraid to open it and go 
in and afraid not to. Annie had been 


School Days 


73 


to school the winter before and was not 
so scared as I was. She took my hand 
reassuringly. 

Don’t let on you’re frightened,’ she 
whispered. 1 Maybe Miss Amma has n’t 
missed us and we can slip into our seats 
without being seen.’ 

“Annie opened the door just as easy, 
and we slid in without a sound. But alas! 
alas! Miss Amma was hearing the advanced 
arithmetic class and she stood facing the 
door, so the second we stepped in she saw us. 

“She stopped explaining a problem long 
enough to order Annie and me to stand in 
opposite corners up on the platform where 
everybody could see us. 

“No one had had to stand in the comer 
since I had started to school, so instead of 
facing the corner as I should have done I 
stood with my face toward the school. I 
looked to see if Charlie was in his place. 
When he saw me looking at him, he began 
making motions. I thought he meant for 
me to stand tight in the comer, so I pushed 
as close as I could to the wall. All over the 
room pupils were smiling at me and pointing 
and shaking their heads. I wondered what 


74 


Early Candlelight Stories 


they meant. I looked across at Annie. She 
was laughing and she made a motion, too. 
Then I thought of what she had said—not 
to let on I was frightened. Maybe I looked 
scared. I looked at Annie again. She stuck 
her head into the corner, looked at me, 
frowned, put her head in the comer again. 
What did she mean? It was too funny the 
way they were all acting. Then I laughed, 
too, right out loud, before I knew it. I 
laughed and laughed. I could n’t stop. 

“Teacher gave me a long, severe look. 

“ ‘Turn around and face the corner, Sarah,’ 
she said, ‘and you may remain after school.’ 

“Then I knew what Charlie and Annie 
and the others had been trying to tell me. 
I stood there in the corner until the scholars 
had all gone home and Miss Amma had 
swept the floor and cleaned the blackboard 
and emptied the water bucket. 

“Finally she called me, and I went over 
to her desk. When she asked me why I 
had run off at recess and then disturbed the 
whole school by laughing, I told her all 
about it, and she said she would forgive me 
that time and helped me on with my cape 
and hood. 


School Days 


75 


“Charlie was waiting for me down the 
road a piece. He had n’t even thought of 
going to see Bowser’s house, but had been 
down in the meadow watching the big boys 
dig out a woodchuck. 

“And, now, an apple all around and good 
night.” 


A BIRTHDAY PARTY 

“Mm! Isn’t it beautiful?” exclaimed 
Grandma as she stood with Bobby and Alice 
and Pink admiring the table decorated for 
Pink’s birthday party. Everything was pink 
and white. The lovely white-frosted cake 
had pink candles in pink rose-holders — seven, 
one for each year and one to grow on. There 
were pink candies and pink flowers and pink 
caps for the little girls and boys to wear. 

“‘And the ice cream is to be pink,’ Alice 
explained, ‘pink ice cream shaped like ani¬ 
mals—dogs and bunnies and kittens.’ 

“ My, but is n’t that fine! ” said Grandma. 
“Now my first party wasn’t a bit like this. 
Maybe tonight if you are not too tired I’ll 
tell you about my party.” 

And that night after they had told Grandma 
about Pink’s party she told them about hers. 

“We didn’t have many parties when I 
was little,” Grandma began, “and we never 
had regular little girls’ parties. Everyone, 
big and little, came, and they were generally 
surprise parties and the guests would bring 
the refreshments with them. One evening 
76 


A Birthday Party 


77 


going home from school, the girls were wish¬ 
ing that some one would get up a surprise 
party, when suddenly Annie Brierly said, 
'“Why don’t we get up a party for Sarah, 
girls? Friday is her birthday. Do you think 
your Mother would care, Sarah?’ 

'“We’d both help her,’ Callie Orbison put 
in before I could answer. ‘You don’t need 
to do much getting ready for a surprise 
party. We could have it Friday night, and 
Saturday we’d both come over and help 
clean up the house.’ 

"'Not a soul but Callie and me would 
know you knew anything about it,’ urged 
Annie, 'and we could have just loads of fun.’ 

"I promised to think about it, and the more 
I thought about it the better I liked the idea 
of having a party of my very own. It did n’t 
take much persuasion the next day to make 
me consent. Annie and Callie were delighted 
and immediately fell to making plans, but they 
agreed that nothing should be said to Mother 
until Thursday evening, the date set for the 
party being Friday night. 

"The days that followed were full of min¬ 
gled pleasure and pain for me. I was happy 
at the idea of having a real party, but it did n’t 


78 


Early Candlelight Stories 


seem fair to deceive Mother. Once I thought 
of telling her all about it just as I told her 
about everything else. But I was afraid she 
would say I was too young to have a party, 
and I had never been to a party in my life. 
Sister Aggie was visiting Aunt Louisa in Clay- 
ville, and Mother had no one to help her except 
for what I could do mornings and evenings. 
But I would be at home all day Saturday, and 
Annie and Callie had said that they would 
help. 

“ Thursday morning Annie told me that she 
had baked a cake and put my initials on top 
in little red candies, and Callie said her 
mother was going to bake an election cake 
with spices and raisins in it. All day Thurs¬ 
day I kept thinking about the party. It 
was n’t off my mind a minute. I could n’t 
study for thinking about it, and I missed a 
word in spelling—the first word I’d missed 
that term—and had to go to the. foot of the 
class. 

“But by the time we had started home I 
had made up my mind to one thing, that if I 
could not have a party with everything open 
and above board I did not want one at all. 
And so I told the girls that I had changed my 


A Birthday Party 


79 


mind and did not want them to have a sur¬ 
prise party for me. They coaxed and argued 
and teased, but I was firm. I was sorry 
that Annie had baked a cake and I hated to 
disappoint them, but I did not want a party. 
The girls were cross with me, and I felt miser¬ 
able when Annie turned in her gate without 
saying good-by. 

11 Aggie had come home from Clayville that 
afternoon, and she was so busy telling Mother 
the news and describing the latest fashions, 
and showing the things she had bought, that 
no one noticed me much. Not a word was 
said all evening about my birthday being so 
near. Even Charlie did n’t tease me about 
what he would do, such as ducking me in the 
rain barrel, as he always did, and I thought 
everyone had forgotten all about my birthday. 

“But Friday morning just before I started 
to school Aggie gave me a plain little handker¬ 
chief that she had hemstitched before she went 
away, and then I knew for sure that she had 
not brought me anything from Clayville. 
And when Mother gave me a pair of common 
home-knit stockings, I thought I should cry 
right out before everybody instead of waiting 
until I got started to school. 


8o 


Early Candlelight Stories 


“ Annie and Callie were in a good humor 
again and as pleasant as could be, but I felt 
so unhappy that day that I did n’t notice 
that the girls at school seemed unusually 
happy and excited. When I finally did notice 
it, I was afraid that Annie and Callie had gone 
ahead with plans for the party. I accused 
them of this, but they denied it. 

“ ‘No, no, we did n’t do another thing about 
the party, ’ they declared. But they looked at 
each other and laughed when they said it, 
and I did n’t believe them. 

“ ‘You did,’ I said, ‘you know you did.’ 

“ ‘Cross my heart and hope to die if we 
did,’ Callie insisted. 

“ ‘Here’s some of the cake that I baked for 
your party that we did n’t have,’ said Annie. 
‘Now will you believe us? I brought you 
girls each a piece, but it was a sin to cut that 
cake—it was such a beautiful cake.’ And 
she handed us each a slice of delicious, yellow 
sponge cake decorated with red candies. 

“Mother had given me an errand to do at 
the store on my way home, so it was later than 
usual when, hungry and tired, I opened the 
kitchen door. Mother met me and took my 
bundles and books. 


A Birthday Party 


81 



Out from the hall rushed Annie and Callie and seven other little girls 


11 'Take your wraps off here, Sarah,' she 
said. 'Aggie has company in the sitting 
room.' I didn’t hear anyone talking, but I 
took off my coat. Then Aggie called me and 
I went into the sitting room, but I stopped in 
amazement just inside the door. 

"In the center of the room was a table set 
with Mother's best linen and china and silver, 
and while I gazed at it, out from the hall 
rushed Annie and Callie and seven other little 
girls all near my own age dressed up in their 
Sunday frocks and each one thrusting some 
sort of package toward me. 

6 



















82 


Early Candlelight Stories 


“I could n’t say a word—I just burst into 
tears. I went upstairs with Mother to wash 
my face and put on my best dress. She 
told me Aggie had written invitations on cards 
she had bought in Clayville, and Charlie had 
carried them to the girls that morning. Then 
I told Mother all about the party we had 
planned to have, and she said not to think 
any more about it but that she was glad I 
had told her. 

“We played games—‘Pussy wants a cor¬ 
ner’ and ‘Button, button, who’s got the 
button’ and ‘ Hide the thimble ’— and asked 
riddles and had a good time. 

“Then we had supper. There were cold 
roast chicken, tiny hot biscuits and peach pre¬ 
serves, three kinds of cake, and hot chocolate 
that Aggie had learned to make in Clayville 
and none of us had ever tasted before. 

“Mother and Aggie had given me those 
presents in the morning just to fool me. Aggie 
had brought me a lovely story book, and 
Mother had a string of pretty pink beads for 
me. Charlie gave me a little basket he had 
whittled out of a peach seed, and from Father 
I got a silver dollar. 

“And now good night, pleasant dreams.” 




THE LOCUSTS 


“Grandma,” said Bobby one evening, ‘'did 
you ever see a locust—a seventeen-year 
locust? And why are they called seventeen- 
year locusts?” 

“ Oh, yes, I ’ve seen locusts and heard them, 
too,” answered Grandma, taking up her knit¬ 
ting. ‘ ‘ They are called seventeen-year locusts 
because they come every seventeen years. 
They lay their eggs in a tree. These eggs 
hatch tiny worms, called larvae, which fall to 
the ground and stay there for seventeen 
years changing slowly until they have turned 
into locusts. They live only about thirty days, 
but they often do a great deal of damage in 
this time. One year when I was a little girl 
all our fruit was eaten by the locusts and 
many of the trees were killed. They ate the 
garden stuff, the potato tops, and even the 
flowers, so it must have been somewhat as 
it was in Pharaoh’s time. 

“You remember Pharaoh was the king of 
Egypt who refused to let the children of 
Israel go. For this God sent the plagues on 
Pharaoh and the people of Egypt. One of these 
83 


84 


Early Candlelight Stories 


plagues was the locusts. God caused a strong 
east wind to blow all day and all night, and 
this wind brought the locusts. They were 
every place—all over the ground, in Pharaoh’s 
house, and in the houses of his people. They 
ate all the vegetables and fruits, even the 
leaves on the trees, so there was nothing green 
left in all the land. The noise they made must 
have been awful. When Pharaoh repented, 
the Lord sent a strong west wind which blew 
the locusts away, and they were drowned in 
the Red Sea. Ever since that time people 
have thought the locusts say ‘Pharaoh.’ 

“I believe I’ll tell you tonight about the 
first time I ever heard a locust. Mother won¬ 
dered one day at dinner whether there were 
any blackberries ripe yet. She said she 
wished she had enough for a few pies. So that 
afternoon I took a pail and started for the 
blackberry field. I did n’t tell anyone where 
I was going, for I wanted to surprise Mother. 
I was afraid that if she knew she might n’t 
let me go alone, for she was timid about 
snakes. Sure enough, I saw a snake nearly 
the first thing, but it was a harmless little 
garter snake and scuttled away into the bushes 
as soon as it heard me. 


The Locusts 


85 


There were lots and lots of red berries, 
but only a few ripe ones here and there. I 
wandered on and on, thinking every minute 
I should come to a patch of ripe berries where 
I could fill my pail in a few minutes. It 
was n’t much fun blackberrying all by myself. 
I scratched my hands and face and tore my 
dress on the briars and wished many times 
that I was back home, but I kept on picking 
until my pail was full. 

“I did not realize how far I had gone nor 
how long I had been out until I noticed that 
the sun was going down. Then I started to 
hurry home as fast as I could. But I was 
tired and my bucket grew heavier with every 
step, so I often sat down to rest. I rested a 
long time under a chestnut tree, and then 
after I had walked miles, it seemed to me, I 
found myself back under this same tree. I 
knew it was the same tree because Charlie 
had cut my initials on it the summer before. 
I had been going around in a circle! I 
started out again. I looked to the right and 
to the left and straight ahead, but I could n’t 
find the path. 

“I was lost—lost in that great blackberry 
patch over a mile from home. Night was 


86 


Early Candlelight Stories 


coming on, and no one knew where I had gone. 
I wondered where I should sleep if no one 
found me before it got dark, and what I should 
eat. Of course I could climb a tree, but 
I might go to sleep and fall out of it. I 
should n’t starve, for I could eat blackberries, 
but the very thought of eating any more 
blackberries made me feel sick. 

“I hurried this way and that, trying to 
find my way out and growing more frightened 
every minute. 

“Then suddenly I heard some one calling 
to me. 

“ ‘Sa—rah! Sa—rah!’ I heard as plain 
as plain could be, and I answered them. I 
screamed at the top of my voice, ‘Here I am! 
Here I am!’ But the voices—there seemed 
to be a great many of them—only kept on 
saying over and over again, ‘Sa—rah! 
Sa—rah!’ 

“I ran, stumbling and falling through the 
bushes, still holding to my precious pail of 
berries, but I did n’t seem to get any nearer 
to the folks who were calling me. All the 
neighbors must be out helping hunt for me, 
I thought to myself. That was queer, too, 
for it was n’t really dark and Mother was 


The Locusts 


87 


used to having me play for hours at a time 
down by the run or on the hill under the 
oak trees. 

Presently I came to an open space. There 
was a group of trees at the far edge, and there 
under those trees, to my great surprise, stood 
Mother’s little Jersey cow. I ran toward her, 
and when she saw me she gave a weak ‘moo.’ 
But when she tried to move I saw that she 
was caught fast by the horns in a wild grape¬ 
vine that grew around the tree. I tried to 
free her, but I could n’t. The wild grapevine 
is very tough and strong, and Jersey was 
securely fastened by it. I petted her and 
talked to her and forgot to be afraid any more. 
Then I happened to think that if she had been 
there very long she must be thirsty. She was 
not giving any milk and had been turned out 
to graze in the pasture field that joined the 
berry patch and had probably come through 
a bad place in the fence. I remembered hav¬ 
ing passed a spring a little way back, and I 
emptied my berries carefully in a pile on the 
ground and ran back and filled my bucket 
with water. But I couldn’t reach Jersey’s 
mouth, and though she tried frantically to 
get at the water she couldn’t get her head 


88 


Early Candlelight Stories 


down to it. I dragged two pieces of old log 
over and built up a platform. Then I 
climbed up on it with my bucket of water, 
and my, how glad Jersey was to get that 
cool drink! 

“Then I sat down on a log to wait for some 
one to come. To keep from getting lonely I 
began to say over my memory verses for the 
next Sunday. I was committing the Twenty- 
third Psalm and I had just reached the line 
beginning, 'He restoreth my soul/ when I 
heard them calling again. 

“ 'Sa—rah! Sa—rah!’ they said just as 
before. I jumped up and cried out as loud 
as I could, 1 Here I am! Here I am! ’ I was 
determined to make them hear me this time, 
and I said it over and over until I was hoarse, 
and the more I answered the louder the voices 
seemed to call. 

“Then to my joy came a voice I knew. 
'Where are you and what are you doing here? ’ 
it said, and crashing through the bushes came 
my big brother Stanley. I rushed crying 
into his arms, and the funny part was that 
Stanley did not know I was lost. He was on 
his way home from work on the upper place 
and had come down to see if the berries were 



How glad Jersey was to get that cool drink 1 
















go 


Early Candlelight Stories 


ripe so he could tell Mother. He had heard 
me calling and had come to find me. 

“With his pocket knife he cut the vines 
that held Jersey, and we drove her slowly 
back to the pasture field after he had helped 
me pick up the berries. 

“When Stanley and I got home Mother 
was just starting Charlie out to look for me. 
She was pleased to get the berries and glad 
I had found Jersey. Father said Jersey might 
have starved before he would have missed 
her, but Mother made a rule that I was never 
again to go farther away than the oak trees 
or the run without asking her. 

“ 'Who was calling me?’ I asked. 'Some 
one was calling me. They still are. Listen! ’ 
and there it was again. 

“ ‘Sa—rah! Sa—rah!’ 

“They all looked puzzled. Then Mother 
laughed. 

“‘Oh,’ she said, 'I know what she means. 
Why, that isn’t anyone calling you, dear. 
That’s the locusts and they say, 'Pha — 
raoh! Pha—raoh!’ But it does sound like 
'Sa—rah,’ doesn’t it? And I am very 
glad you thought they said 'Sa—rah’ and 
answered them or Stanley would n’t have 


The Locusts 


9 i 


found you and you might have been up in 
the berry patch all night.’ 

“There, that was a long story, wasn’t 
it? Hurry to bed now, for you know, 

“Early to bed and early to rise, 

Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.’' 


ONE FOURTH OF JULY 

Grandma had promised the children a 
Fourth of July story, and Bobby and Alice 
and Pink drew up their stools and waited 
eagerly for her to begin. 

“Father was going to take us to Clayville 
to the Fourth of July celebration,’* Grandma 
began. “We were all going except Mother 
and Nanny Dodds, who was helping us over 
hay harvest. I had been to Clayville once 
before. 

“‘But that time it was on just a common 
every-day day,’ as I told Nanny. ‘This 
will be different.’ 

“We were to start early—early in the 
morning—for Clayville was twelve miles 
away and we did not want to miss a single 
thing. 

“First there would be a parade with two 
brass bands, then ‘speaking’ on the court¬ 
house steps, and after that an ox roast. In 
the afternoon there were to be horse races 
and games. Father promised that we should 
have supper at the hotel and stay for the 
fireworks in the evening. I had never seen 


92 


One Fourth of July 


93 


even a firecracker, and I looked forward to 
seeing the skyrockets most of all. 

'‘I was to wear a new light calico dress 
with a little blue flower in it and a blue sash 
and my ruffled white sunbonnet that was 
kept for Sundays. I talked so much about 
going that Mother and my sisters and every 
one else except Nanny grew dreadfully tired 
listening to me and begged me to talk of 
something else. 

“ Nanny was twenty and bashful and as 
homely as could be, but I loved her very 
much. When she made cookies she put a 
raisin in the center of some of them, and 
others she sprinkled with sugar. And she 
made gingerbread men with current eyes and 
baked saucer pies and let me scrape the cake 
bowl. She sewed for my doll and bound up 
my hurt fingers tenderly and told the nicest 
stories. There was no end to the things 
Nanny did for me, but I liked the stories 
best of all. 

“The day before the Fourth, when I sat 
on the edge of the kitchen table watching 
Nanny beat eggs for the sponge cake and 
talking about what I should see the next 
day, Nanny said in a wistful voice, ‘I’ve 


94 


Early Candlelight Stories 


never been to Clayville. I always thought 
I’d like to go, but I never had a chance.’ 



table and went in search of Mother. I found 
her at the spring-house churning. 

"'Mother,’ I said, 'let’s take Nanny with 
us tomorrow.’ 

'“I’m afraid there isn’t room,’ Mother 
answered regretfully. ' There are already five 
of you, and the surrey is old and not strong.’ 

"‘Nanny doesn’t weigh much,’ I argued. 

‘“I know, dear, but Father is afraid to 
load the surrey any heavier for fear you’d 












One Fourth of July 


95 


break down and not get to town at all. I 
have told Nanny she may go home to see 
her mother tomorrow.’ 

“All the rest of the morning I sat under 
the apple tree in the side yard, thinking. 
Once when Charlie came through the yard 
with a jug to fill with water for the men in 
the hayfield I called him over. Maybe he 
might offer to let Nanny go in his place. 
To be sure, I had n’t much hope of this, but 
still it was worth trying. 

“‘Charlie,’ I said, ‘I think Nanny would 
like to go to the Fourth of July celebration.’ 

“‘Sure, who wouldn’t?’ he replied easily. 
‘I want to go myself,’ and he went on to the 
well. 

“I tried sister Belle next. I found her 
picking chickens in the orchard and offered to 
help. Then presently I suggested to her that 
she could go to Clayville with the Strangs’, 
since their surrey would not be crowded as 
ours would, and then Nanny could go with 
us. She only laughed scornfully and made 
me finish picking the chicken I had started. 

“I went sadly back to the apple tree. 

“‘Nanny wants to go,’ I thought to 
myself, ‘and I want to go, too, but if I stay 


9 6 


Early Candlelight Stories 


at home Nanny could go in my place. It 
would be a sacrifice,’ I sighed deeply. 
'Preacher Hill says a sacrifice is giving up 
something you want yourself. I want to 
go more than I ever wanted anything, but 
I have lots of things Nanny doesn’t have. 
I have curly hair and Nanny’s hair is straight. 
I can read and Nanny can’t. I’ve seen the 
train and had my dinner at a hotel. I’ve 
traveled and Nanny’s never been farther 
from home than Mt. Zion Church.’ 

"That night after I had said my prayers 
I put my arms around my Mother’s neck 
and whispered, "'Mother, I want Nanny to 
go in my place tomorrow.’ 

"'Why, dear!’ Mother started to protest. 
But after looking earnestly into my face she 
said, 'Do you really want to stay at home 
and let Nanny go in your place? You must 
be very, very sure, you know.’ 

"‘I’m sure, Mother,’ I declared solemnly. 
'Yes, I’m sure I want her to go.’ 

"'Well, sleep on it, and if you feel the 
same in the morning you shall stay with 
Mother and Nanny may go.’ 

"I wakened at daylight to find Mother 
standing beside my bed. 


One Fourth of July 


97 


“‘Are you awake, Sarah?’ she asked. 
‘They are all up but you.’ 

“I sat up in bed dazed. I could hear the 
girls rushing around in their room. From 
the kitchen came the rattle of dishes and 
out in the barn the boys were whistling. 
Suddenly I remembered. It was the Fourth 
of July! 

“‘I haven’t changed my mind, Mother,’ 
I said yawning sleepily. 

“Mother bent down and kissed me before 
going to tell Nanny. At first Nanny would 
not hear of it and left off getting breakfast to 
come and tell me so. I pretended to be too 
sleepy to talk, so Nanny, urged by Mother, 
finally went away to get ready, and Mother 
went down to finish getting the breakfast. 

“But I wasn’t a bit sleepy a little later 
when I jumped out of bed to watch them 
start. 

“Father and Aggie sat on the front seat 
of the surrey, and Belle, Nanny, and Charlie 
on the back seat, while Joe, Stanley, and 
Truman rode horseback. They all looked 
very fine and grand to me dressed in their 
best clothes, and I choked back a sob as 
they drove down the road and out of sight. 


7 


98 Early Candlelight Stories 

“All morning I helped Mother. I did 
lots of things the girls would n’t let me do 
when they were doing the work. I dried 
the dishes and fed the chickens and dusted 
the sitting room and scrubbed the walks. 

“Then Mother and I had our lunch out 
under the apple tree in the side yard—some 
of everything the girls had put in their lunch 
basket—fried chicken and sponge cake and 
green-apple pie. My, but it tasted good! 
In the afternoon Mother made my doll a 
new dress, and we went together to hunt the 
little turkeys and get the cows. 

“It was awfully late when the folks got 
back, but I sat up in bed to see them. Every 
one of them had brought me something. 
Spread out on the bed were a flag and a bag 
of peanuts, a pewter tea set from Father, a 
sticky popcorn ball, and a sack of pepper¬ 
mint lozenges, but the nicest of all was when 
Nanny gave me a hug and whispered, ‘I 
had the grandest time of my life, Sarah, and 
I reckon it’ll take me a month to tell you 
about all the things I saw.’ 

“Now, let me think! What in the world 
will I tell you about tomorrow night? Oh, 
I know, but I won’t tell.’’ 


THE BEE TREE 

There had been honey for supper, and 
afterward, before the cozy fire in her room, 
Grandma was telling Bobby and Alice and 
Pink about how the bees live in little wooden 
houses called hives and make the honey 
from a fluid taken from the heart of the 
flowers. 

"But I knew of some bees once that did 
not live in a hive but in a hollow tree.” 
Grandma reached for her work basket and 
drew out her knitting. "While I put the 
thumb in Bobby’s mitten I’ll tell you about 
those bees.” 

"When I was a little girl,” she began, 
"not many people kept bees and we could 
not buy honey at the store, so honey was 
considered a great treat. The first beehive 
I ever saw belonged to Mr. Brierly. The 
Brierly’s lived on the next farm to us, but 
between them and us, in a little house on 
Mr. Brierly’s place, lived a family named 
Henlen. They were very lazy and hunted 
and fished and worked just enough to get 
what money they must have. Mr. Brierly 
99 


ioo Early Candlelight Stories 

had given them a swarm of bees and helped 
them make a hive for it, and the Brierlys 



Early in the summer one of Mr. Brierly's hives swarmed 


and the Henlens were the only people in our 
neighborhood who kept bees. 

“Then early in the summer one of Mr. 
Brierly’s hives swarmed. That is, a swarm 
of bees left the old hive and wanted to set 
up in a hive of its own. Usually when a 
young swarm left the old hive Mr. Brierly 
gave them a new hive and they settled down 
contentedly and went to making honey. But 
this swarm flew away and lighted in a hollow 
tree on the edge of our woods. 







The Bee Tree 


IOI 


“Mr. Brierly did not find them for several 
days. Then he told Father he would just 
leave them where they were, if Father did 
not care, and when he took the honey he 
would divide with us. Father told him he 
was welcome to leave the bees as long as 
he wanted to and to keep the honey. But 
Mr. Brierly said Father must take half of 
the honey or he would not leave the bees. 
So Father agreed and Mr. Brierly left the 
bees. 

“ Every morning when Charlie and I took 
the cows to pasture we would skip across 
the field to take a long look at the bee tree. 
We would watch the bees as they flew in 
and out the hole in the side of the tree and 
wondered how much honey they had made 
and talked about how good it would taste 
on hot biscuits. 

“So all summer the bees worked away, 
and one day in the fall Mr. Brierly sent 
Father word that he would be over that week 
to take the honey. A few mornings later 
when I came in sight of the bee tree I stopped 
in amazement. The bee tree was gone! 
Instead of standing straight and tall like a 
soldier on guard, it lay flat on the ground. 


102 


Early Candlelight Stories 


Chips of wood were scattered all around. 
The bee tree had been cut down. 

“I started for home as fast as I could 
go to tell Father. He wasn’t at the bam, 
and I went to the house. Back of the house, 
under a sugar tree, the girls were washing 
and Charlie was carrying water for them. 
As I came up Aggie was scolding because 
one of the washtubs was missing. When I 
told them about the bee tree they were as 
excited as I was. Charlie ran to the wheat 
field where Father was ploughing to tell 
him, and we girls went in to find Mother. 

“ Belle declared that whoever stole the 
honey must have taken the tub to carry it 
away in. And since the honey was on our 
land and we knew it was ready to take 
away and the tub was ours, it would look to 
Mr. Brierly as if we had had something to 
do with it. Aggie laughed at her and said, 
‘The very idea of anyone thinking we would 
steal!’ But Mother looked serious. 

“Father came right to the house, got on 
a horse, and rode over to Mr. Brierly’s. 
Mr. Brierly came back with him, and they 
examined the fallen bee tree carefully. It 
had been chopped down. Mr. Brierly said 


The Bee Tree 


103 


he thought we would have heard the blows 
down at the house. Father replied coldly 
that we had heard nothing and knew nothing 
about it until I had taken the cows to pasture, 
and would n’t have known then if I had not 
run across to look at the bees. He told him 
about our tub being gone, too. Aggie said 
it was n’t at all necessary to tell that, but 
Belle said Father was too honest to keep 
anything back. 

“Father imagined that Mr. Brierly 
thought we knew something about the dis¬ 
appearance of the honey. Of course Father 
resented this, so the Brierlys and we ceased 
to be friendly. Mrs. Brierly and Mother 
had always helped each other to quilt and 
make apple butter and had exchanged recipes 
and loaned patterns back and forth, but all 
this stopped now. 

“School started, and Tom and Annie 
Brierly did not wait for Charlie and me 
as they had always done. If they had not 
gone to school before we came along, they 
waited until we had passed by before they 
started. 

“Charlie and I worried a great deal about 
the coldness between the two families and 


104 Early Candlelight Stories 

the unhappiness it was causing. We were 
always making plans to discover who took 
the honey and so clear things up. 

“One day when Charlie was eating his 
dinner at school he noticed that Flora May 
Henlen had something on her bread that 
looked like honey. He told me to watch 
her, and the next day at noon I took my 
dinner and sat down near Flora May to eat 
it. Sure enough, it was honey she had 
on her bread. But then I remembered that 
they had bees and she had a right to have 
honey. Still I watched Flora May for several 
days, and she always had honey on her bread. 

“‘Did your bees make lots of honey this 
year, Flora May?’ I asked her one day. 

“‘Oh, yes,’ she answered, ‘every few days 
the boys bring in a pan of honey.’ 

“That evening Charlie made an excuse 
to stop a while with one of the Henlen boys, 
and in the orchard back of the house he saw 
their bee hive lying on the ground among 
some rubbish and rotting leaves. 

“We told our discovery at home, and my 
brother Truman said the Henlens had had 
no bees at all for months. They had been 
starved or frozen out the winter before. 


The Bee Tree 


105 


“The next morning Father stopped Asa 
and Longford Henlen as they were passing 
our house on the way home from mill and 
told them he knew they had taken the honey. 
At first they denied all knowledge of the 
honey, but when they found that in some 
way Father had found out about it they were 
scared and admitted that they had chopped 
down the tree and, finding more honey than 
they had expected, had taken our tub to 
carry it away in. 

“Mr. Brierly and Father decided that if 
the boys would work out the pay for. the 
honey and promise not to steal any more 
they would not tell anyone. 

“Mr. Brierly apologized to Father, and 
Mrs. Brierly and Mother kissed the next 
time they met, and Tom and Annie began 
waiting for Charlie and me again, so that 
everything was all right once more. 

“Get the apples, Bobby, please, and tomor¬ 
row night, if you say your prayers and go 
right to sleep tonight, I’ll tell you about — 
well, it’s an awfully good story I have for 
tomorrow night.” 


BRAIN AGAINST BRAWN 


Bobby was feeling his muscle and telling 
his sisters how strong he wanted to be, and 
Grandma, hearing him, said, “Of course 
it's nice to be strong, Bobby, but strength 
won’t get anyone very far unless it is 
combined with brains. I knew a delicate 
looking boy once who got ahead of half 
a dozen big strong fellows, not because he 
was strong, but because he had brains and 
used them. 

“It was long, long ago—the winter my 
brother Truman taught our home school. 
Mother did n’t want Truman to take the 
school, for, though he was eighteen years 
old, he was a slender, little fellow and his 
blue eyes and light hair made him look 
even younger than he really was. But Father 
said for him to go ahead and see what he 
could do. 

“There were several bad boys in school. 
The year before they had run the teacher 
out before the term was half over, and we 
had no more school that winter. When 
they heard that Truman was going to teach, 
106 


Brain Against Brawn 107 

they made all sorts of boasts about what 
they meant to do. 

'‘Truman got along all right the first few 
weeks until the older boys, who had been 
working at a sawmill, started in. Nearly 
all of these boys were bigger than Truman, 
and Bud McGill, the leader, was a year 
older. He had broken up several schools 
and bragged that he would run Truman 
out in short order. 

“From the day he started he did every¬ 
thing he could to make trouble. Because 
he had started to school late in the term 
he did not get the seat he wanted. One 
morning he came early and took this seat 
and refused to give it up when Truman asked 
him to. Truman could n’t force him to give 
it up, because Bud was so much larger and 
stronger. All day long Bud sat there in the 
corner seat talking and laughing and throw¬ 
ing paper wads at girls—disturbing all the 
rest of us so we could not study. At dis¬ 
missing time Truman told him to take his 
books with him and not come back to school 
until he could behave himself, but Bud 
walked out as bold as you please without 
a single book. 


108 Early Candlelight Stories 

“I don’t know just how it would have 
come out if Bud’s father had not heard 
about the trouble. But he did, and he 
told Bud he would have to give up the seat 
unless he got the teacher’s permission to 
keep it. 

“Bud said he’d get Truman’s .permission 
all right. 

“The next morning I went to school early 
with Truman because Charlie was sick and 
could n’t go. As soon as we came in sight 
of the schoolhouse and saw a thick column 
of smoke rising from the chimney we knew 
something had happened, for Truman always 
built the fire himself. 

“When we got within hearing distance, 
Bud McGill opened the door a tiny bit and 
called out to Truman, 'Have I your say-so 
to keep the seat in the corner?’ 

“'No, you haven’t,’ Truman said shortly, 
and Bud slammed the door in his face and 
bolted it. Bud’s plan was to keep Truman 
out of the schoolhouse until he agreed to 
Bud’s taking the seat he wanted. Then 
Truman could come in and take up books 
as usual, but if he did this he would be 
admitting that Bud was the real authority in 


Brain Against Brawn 109 

the school and the other pupils would cease 
to respect him. 

“As the children came to school Bud 
opened the door and let them in. They 
offered to let me in, too, but I would n’t 
go. Truman wanted me to go back home, 
but I would n’t do that either. Several of 
the boys stopped to talk to Truman and 
offered to help him. Bud’s crowd saw the 
boys talking to Truman and thought they 
were going to combine and try to enter the 
schoolhouse by force. Bud dared them to 
come ahead. He went so far as to say that 
if the teacher got in he would do whatever 
he said. But Truman urged the boys who 
were eager to help him to go on in and not 
make any trouble. He said it was his prob¬ 
lem and he would have to settle it alone as 
best he could. So they went in, and Truman 
and I were left alone. 

“Truman brought some kindling from 
the coal house and built a fire, and we stood 
around it to keep warm. 

“‘I’ve got to get ahead of them some 
way,’ Truman said, as much to himself as 
to me. ‘ I ’ll have to beat them or I’m done 
for. And if I give up the school, that 


no 


Early Candlelight Stories 


means no spring term at the academy. I Ve 
either got to outwit Bud and his crowd 
or give up the school.’ Just then a strong 
wind blew the smoke in our eyes and 
started them to smarting. This gave Truman 
an idea. 

“‘I might smoke them out,’ he said 
thoughtfully. ‘If I could only get to the 
roof, I could stuff this old coat down the 
chimney. You wait here, Sarah, while I 
look around for a ladder.’ 

“He strolled to the back of the building 
where there were no windows, got down on 
his hands and knees, and crawled under 
the house to look for a ladder that had 
been there. But the ladder was gone. He 
examined the walls of the schoolhouse, but 
they were smoothly weather-boarded and 
gave no foothold. 

“He got an armful of kindling to build 
up the fire, and presently, though it wasn’t 
noon, we opened our lunch basket and ate 
our dinner. A cold wind had risen and the 
fire was getting low. Whatever Truman did 
must be done quickly, for the short winter 
afternoon would soon be over. 

“I shivered and edged nearer to the fire. 


Brain Against Brawn 


hi 


ul I wish I had Belle’s new cape,’ I said. 
'It would keep me good and warm. Did 
you see Belle’s new dolman and hat that 
she got while she was at Clayville yester¬ 
day, Truman?’ I asked idly, just for some¬ 
thing to say. 

"He didn’t answer me at once. Then, 
'Has anyone else seen them?’ he asked 
quietly. 'I mean anyone else except our 
own folks.’ 

"No, not a soul,’ I said. 'No one knows 
she even went to town.’ 

'' Truman stared at me blankly. ' I wonder 
if I could do it,’ he murmured. 

"'Why I’m sure you could,’ I said, not 
in the least knowing what he was Talking 
about, but eager to encourage him in any 
way I could. 

I ’ll try it! ’ he cried. ‘ You go in, Sarah, 
and tell them I ’ll be back in an hour.’ With 
that he started down the road, and I went 
in and gave them his message. Some of the 
boys hooted and laughed and said they 
might as well go home, but finally decided to 
wait. 

"Less than an hour from the time Truman 
left some of the scholars impatiently watching 


I 12 


Early Candlelight Stories 


the road for his return were surprised to see 
a lady approaching on horseback from the 
opposite direction. She got off her horse 



“ The teacher is out just now. Won't you have a chair?" said Bud 


in front of the schoolhouse and looked help¬ 
lessly around. Bud McGill dashed out and 
tied her horse to the fence. The girls said 
she must be a stranger, for none of them 
had ever seen her before. 

“A plaid dolman of the newest style, 
trimmed with fringe, fell nearly to her knees, 
and she wore a wide black beaver hat with 
a thick veil and glasses. She walked with 
mincing steps to the door, daintily holding 















Brain Against Brawn 


113 

up her long black riding skirt. Just inside 
she turned to Bud. 

'“Are you the teacher?’ she asked softly. 

'“No, ma’am,’ Bud said politely, 'the 
teacher is out just now. Won’t you have 
a chair?’ 

"The lady sat down at the teacher’s desk 
and began to fumble with her veil. One of 
the girls came forward and deftly removed 
the pins that held it in place. The veil 
slipped off, and there sat Truman dressed 
in sister Belle’s new clothes! There were 
shouts and shouts of laughter in which 
even Bud was forced to join. He came 
forward and offered Truman his hand. 

"'You beat,’ he said. He never made 
any more trouble and we had a good school 
the rest of the winter. 

"See who gets to sleep first and we’ll have 
another story real, real soon.” 


8 


A WISH THAT CAME TRUE 


'‘Grandma,” said Alice one evening when 
she and Bobby and Pink had come into 
Grandma’s room, “do you believe that if 
you look over your right shoulder at the 
new moon and make a wish that it will come 
true?” 

“Naw,” jeered Bobby, “ course not.” 

“Well, I don’t know,” Grandma answered 
thoughtfully. “A wish made that way could 
come true. I made a wish once over a white 
horse and a red-haired girl that came true.” 

“Tell us about it Grandma. Please tell 
us,” coaxed Alice. 

Grandma found her knitting and began. 

“The red-haired girl,” she said, “was 
Betty Bard, our preacher’s granddaughter. 
She had lived at the parsonage with her 
grandparents for nearly a year, and next 
to Annie Brierly she was my best friend. 
The white horse belonged to old Mrs. Orbison, 
who with several other women had come to 
help sister Belle quilt her ‘Rose of Sharon.’ 

“Betty and I were playing under the apple 
tree in the side yard. That is, we were trying 


A Wish That Came True 115 

to play. We could n’t find any game we 
liked. We kept thinking that this might be 
our last afternoon together. You see, con¬ 
ference was to meet the next week, and 
Betty did n’t seem to think her grandfather 
would be sent back to preach on Redding 
circuit. I did n’t think so either. Redding 
circuit was very hard to please, atid though 
Father never found fault with any of our 
preachers and always paid his tithes, still I 
knew that Brother Bard was not popular. 
Betty said it was because he did good by 
stealth and no one ever found it out. 

“‘If I move away,’ said Betty as we 
sat under the apple tree talking that after¬ 
noon, ‘you may have my playhouse rock 
at school, Sarah, and all my dahlia roots, 
and the black kitten. The kitten’s name is 
Bad Boy because he jumps on the table 
when no one is looking. And you must be 
sure to dig the dahlias up before frost.’ 

“Just then Mrs. Orbison’s voice floated 
out through the open sitting-room window. 

“ ‘Jt all depends on the sermon he preaches 
tomorrow,’ she said. ‘If they don’t like it, 
a letter goes to the Presiding Elder saying 
we will not tolerate Brother Bard another 


n6 Early Candlelight Stories 

year and that in case he is sent back against 
our wishes we will not pay him anything.’ 

“I looked quickly at Betty to see if she 
had heard, and I knew by the flush on her 
cheeks that she had. I put my arm through 
hers and we walked slowly toward the front 
gate. It was then I made my wish. I looked 
at Mrs. Orbison’s white horse turned out to 
graze in the orchard across the road and at 
Betty’s red head, and I said to myself, ‘I 
wish for Betty not to move away.’ Out 
loud I said to Betty, * Can’t you tell your 
grandpa to preach a sermon they’ll like, 
Betty, so you won’t have to go away?’ 

“'But how would he know what they’d 
like?’ she asked in a puzzled tone. 

'“Oh, just something pleasant,’ I answered 
cheerfully, 'something nice and pleasant.’ 

'"I’ll tell him what Mrs. Orbison said,’ 
she promised before she went home, 'and he 
can do what he thinks best.’ 

“We stopped at the parsonage the next 
morning to take Betty into the surrey with 
us because her grandma seldom weijt to 
meeting, not being very strong. I could hardly 
wait till Betty and I got around a corner of 
the church to ourselves. 


A Wish That Came True 117 

“‘What did your grandpa say?’ I asked 
eagerly. 

“‘He said he’d do his duty as he saw it, 
and grandma said he stayed up all night. 
She crept downstairs three times to beg him 
to come to bed.’ 

“This did not sound very encouraging, but 
when I heard the text I breathed a sigh of 
relief. It was, ‘Now if Timotheus come, see 
that he may be with you without fear, for he 
worketh the work of the Lord as I also do.’ 
I did n’t know what it meant, but it sounded 
like a safe text, and I became so interested in 
watching a robin hopping on the window sill 
that I did not notice what Preacher Bard was 
saying until I felt Betty straighten up and 
clutch my hand. 

“ I looked around to see what had happened, 
and I knew in a minute that he had not 
preached a sermon to please them. Amaze¬ 
ment, indignation, surprise, showed plainly 
in the upturned faces. I won’t try to tell you 
what was in that sermon, only this—that, in 
the hope of making things easier for his suc¬ 
cessor, Reverend Bard had undertaken in a 
kindly way to open the eyes of the Mt. Zion 
people to some of their faults. They had 


118 Early Candlelight Stories 

found fault with all the preachers. Now he 
pointed out a few of their own shortcomings, 
and they didn’t like it—no, indeed, not a bit. 

“When it was over, the congregation 
poured out of the church, filled the little yard, 
and overflowed into the graveyard beyond. 
No one offered to leave. They stood around 
in groups—whispering, shaking their heads 
gravely, pressing their lips in grim lines. 

“As soon as the preacher left for his after¬ 
noon appointment the storm broke. No one 
paid any attention to Betty as she stood at 
the horseblock with me waiting for Father to 
come round with the surrey. Everybody 
talked at once. 

“ ‘He doesn’t preach the straight gospel— 
he tells too many tales.’ 

“ ‘He doesn’t visit enough.’ 

“ ‘He favors pouring, when we’ve always 
stood for immersion.’ 

“These remarks and many others Betty 
and I heard as we waited there for Father. 
Betty must have stood it just as long as she 
possibly could. Then suddenly she jerked 
away from me and climbed to the horseblock. 
I can see her now—her red hair flying in the 
breeze, her eyes shining, her cheeks flushed. 


A Wish That Came True 119 


“ ‘My grandfather's the best man in the 
world,' she cried, and stamped her foot angrily. 
‘He's the best man in the world, I tell you. 



The congregation stood around in groups—whispering 
and shaking their heads gravely 


I don’t care what you say, he’s the best man 
in the world,' and she crumpled down in a 
little sobbing heap. 

“Father came up then and, putting an arm 
around Betty, he said, ‘Let us pray,’ and 
everybody bowed his head and Father prayed. 
He prayed a long time, and at the last there 
were lots of ‘Amens’ and ‘Praise the Lords' 
just as in big meeting. 












120 


Early Candlelight Stories 


“The second Father finished, an old man 
stepped out in front and said in a halting way 
that he would like every one to know that 
when his cow died in the winter Preacher 
Bard had bought him another. That started 
things. A young man said the preacher had 
sat up with him every other night for six weeks 
when he had typhoid fever. A boy said the 
preacher had bought him school books, and 
the Widow Spears said he had given her 
twenty dollars when her house burned. An 
old lady told how he read one afternoon a 
week to her husband who was blind, and so on 
and on and on. Everybody wanted to tell 
something good about Preacher Bard. 

“Before the meeting broke up a big dona¬ 
tion party was planned for Monday night, 
and Mother got Mrs. Bard to let Betty come 
home with us so she would n’t give it away. 
Monday was a busy day. While the women 
baked and cooked for the party, the men 
raised money to put a new roof oh the parson¬ 
age, to buy a suit of clothes for Brother Bard, a 
black silk dress for Mrs. Bard, so stiff it would 
stand alone, and a blue delaine for Betty. 

“How we surprised the Bards that night 
when we all went in, and what a good time we 


A Wish That Came True 


121 


had! But the best part was when Deacon 
Orbison, who had been opposed to the preacher 
from the first, got up on a chair and made a 
speech. He said it seemed to him Redding 
circuit could not afford to lose a man like 
Reverend Bard, that his salary and benevo¬ 
lences had been made up in full, and that a 
letter would be sent the Presiding Elder asking 
that he be returned for another year. He was 
returned, and Betty and I sat together at 
school that winter, so you see I got my wish. 

“Well, well, if it isn’t bedtime for three 
little children I know. Pass the apples, 
Bobby, please, and next time I’ll tell you— 
well, I just don’t know what I shall tell you 
next time, but I’ll have something for you.” 


JOE’S INFARE 

“I think tonight I’ll tell you about my 
brother Joe’s infare,” said Grandma one even¬ 
ing when Bobby and Alice and Pink had 
come to her room for their usual good-night 
story. “But first,” she went on, before the 
children had time to ask any questions, “I’d 
better tell you what an infare was. It was a 
sort of wedding reception which took place at 
the bridegroom’s home, usually the day after 
the wedding. It was the faring or going of the 
bride into her husband’s home and was cele¬ 
brated with great rejoicing and a big feast. 

“Joe had married Sally Garvin, who lived 
four miles from us by the road but only two 
miles through the fields. They had been 
married the day before, and we were to have 
the infare. 

“Mother and the girls and Nanny Dodds 
had baked and cooked for a solid week. 
And before that they had cleaned the house 
from top to bottom, and we had mowed and 
raked and swept the big front yard and the 
orchard across the road and the pasture lot by 
the house. Now the great day had arrived. 


Joe's Infare 


123 


“Stanley had gone in our surrey to drive 
the bridal couple home, and Truman and the 
girls had ridden horseback to meet them. 
Charlie had brought Hunter, Stanley’s colt, 
down to the bam lot so he could go with them. 
But Mother was afraid to have him ride the 
colt, not knowing that he practiced riding 
him every day in the pasture field. 

“From my lookout on the rail of the front 
portico I saw the first of the guests come over 
the top of two-mile hill. There was a number 
of young men and girls on horseback, followed 
by our surrey with Stanley driving. On the 
back seat I knew the bride and groom sat. 

“I waited for nothing more. I jumped 
down and rushed off to the kitchen to tell 
Mother. Mother gave Nanny some instruc¬ 
tions about the dinner, slipped off the big 
gingham apron that covered her gray silk 
dress, patted her hair before the mirror in the 
hall, and, taking Father’s arm, went down the 
path between the rows of bachelor’s buttons, 
foxglove, Canterbury bells, and ribbon grass 
to welcome her first daughter-in-law. 

“When Sally and Joe had left Sally’s home, 
a number of friends and relatives had started 
with them. These had been added to all 


124 


Early Candlelight Stories 


along the way by other friends, so that there 
was quite a crowd of folks when they reached 
our house, besides lots of people who had 
already come. 

“As soon as Mother and Father had greeted 
Sally, Belle and Aggie hurried her upstairs to 
the spare chamber to put on her wedding 
dress. Sally was little, with pink cheeks, and 
brown curls which she wore caught at the top 
of her head and hanging down her back very 
much as the little girls wear their hair now, 
only the young ladies of that day wore a 
high-backed comb instead of a ribbon. She 
wore a new gray alpaca trimmed in narrow 
silk fluting, very pretty, but nothing like 
what the wedding dress would be. The 
wedding dress had been made in Clayville, 
and Belle and Aggie and everybody else were 
eager to see it. 

“Joe brought up the telescope which held 
Sally’s things and went back downstairs. The 
girls were going to help Sally dress, and I 
kept as much out of sight as possible so I 
could see and yet not be seen. 

“ ‘Open it up, Aggie, please,’ said Sally, 
pointing to the telescope, ‘and lay my dress 
on the bed. I do hope it’s not wrinkled.’ 


Joe's Infare 125 

“ Aggie lifted the telescope from the floor 
to a chair. 

'My goodness, but it’s heavy!’ she cried. 
'What in the world is in it, Sally?’ 

"Sally turned from the mirror. 

'Heavy?’ she said surprised. 'Why, 
there’s hardly anything in it. I packed 
it myself. I wanted to be sure my dress 
would n’t be wrinkled, so I just put in the 
dress and a few other things to do until 
tomorrow.’ 

"Aggie rapidly unbuckled the straps and 
lifted up the lid. Sally gave a smothered cry 
and caught Belle’s arm. 

“ ‘Somebody has made a mistake,’ she 
gasped. 'It is the wrong telescope!’ and she 
threw herself across the bed and burst into 
tears. 

"The telescope was packed tight full with 
towels, pillow slips, tablecloths, and sheets 
and was to have been brought over the next 
day with the rest of Sally’s things. In the 
excitement of leaving, some one had carried it 
down and placed it in the surrey instead of 
the one containing the wedding dress. 

" ‘You look awfully sweet in this little gray 
dress, Sally,’ Aggie tried to console her. But 


126 Early Candlelight Stories 

it was no use, for Sally knew quite well that 
waiting downstairs were girls in dresses 
that looked much more bridelike than the 
gray alpaca. To be outshone at one’s own 
infare — well, it was no wonder she cried! 

“ Belle suggested that Stanley or Truman 
go back for the wedding dress, but Sally 
objected to this. She said people would 
laugh at her and never forget that she had 
gone to her infare and left her wedding dress 
at home. 

“ Suddenly a thought came to me. Hunter 
was still in the barn lot. Charlie could ride 
him, and he went like a streak. It was only 
two miles through the fields to Sally’s home. 
I never stopped to think that Mother would 
be frightened if she knew Charlie was on 
Hunter, or that Father would probably forbid 
it, or that Charlie might ruin his new Sunday 
suit. I slipped out of the room and went in 
search of Charlie. I found him out front 
pitching horseshoes, and in no time at all he 
was off to Sally’s home without a soul knowing 
about it. Then I went upstairs to tell the 
girls what I had done. 

“They were not very hopeful. It didn’t 
seem possible that Sally could stay upstairs 


Joe's Infare 


127 


till Charlie got back with the dress, but she 
said she would wait a little while anyway. 
She got up and bathed her face, and Belle and 
Aggie went down to entertain the guests. 
Belle started several games, such as ‘Strip- 
the-Willow’ and ‘Copenhagen,’ and Aggie 
played the piano. 

“ I was everywhere—in the kitchen begging 
Nanny to hold the dinner back as long as she 
could (I had let her into the secret), on the 
hill behind the house watching for Charlie, 
and in the spare chamber trying to cheer 
Sally up, for at the end of an hour there was 
no sign of Charlie. 

‘‘ What could have happened? He had said 
he could make it in less than an hour. He had 
been gone an hour and twenty minutes! 
People were wondering why Sally did not 
appear. They had lost interest in the games 
and were dropping out and sauntering toward 
the house. Aggie had played everything she 
knew over and over. Belle had run up to tell 
Sally she would have to put on the gray dress 
and come right down, but Sally had coaxed 
for five minutes more. Belle went back and 
started the folks singing ‘The Star-Spangled 
Banner.’ The five minutes were up and 


128 Early Candlelight Stories 

Sally was putting on the gray alpaca dress 
when Charlie came. 

“ The people who had begun to wonder what 
was keeping the bride forgot about it when 
Sally came down and stood with Joe to receive 
their good wishes and congratulations. Her 
dress was heavy cream-colored silk with tiny 
pink rosebuds scattered all over it, and the 
full skirt was ruffled clear to the waist. The 
round neck and elbow sleeves were finished 
with filmy white ruching, and she wore white 
satin slippers. With her pink cheeks and 
shiny brown curls I thought she was the very 
prettiest bride any one ever saw. 

“ When they had gone into the dining room, 
where Annie Brierly and some other little 
girls were waving peach switches over the 
tables to keep the flies and bees away and 
Sally was saying who should sit at the bride’s 
table, Charlie told me what had kept him. 
He had found the Garvins’ house locked up 
and had had to climb in a window to get the 
telescope. The dog had seen him as he had 
gotten in and would n’t let him come out until 
Charlie had fed him and made friends with him. 

“Then some one called us and said that 
Sally wanted Charlie and me to sit at the 


Joe's Infare 


129 


bride’s table. No one could have been more 
surprised than we were, for we had n’t 
expected to eat till the third table at the very 
soonest, and here we were invited to sit at 
the bride’s table and have our pick of the 
choicest food! 

“ There! I hear Mother calling. Good 
night, good night, good night.” 


9 


PUMPKIN SEED 


4 ‘Well, well, ,, said Grandma one evening 
when Bobby and Alice and Pink asked for 
a story. “I wonder if I can think of any¬ 
thing tonight.” She found her knitting and 
went on in a puzzled tone. “I thought of 
something today to tell you about. Let me 
see, what was it? Oh, I remember now. 
It was the pumpkin pie at dinner that set 
me thinking about the pumpkin seed that 
Father gave brother Charlie and me to plant.” 

“It was in the spring. The fish were 
biting fine, and one afternoon Charlie and 
I were all ready to go down to the deep hole 
under the willows to fish. Charlie had cut 
new poles and hunted up hooks and lines, 
and I had packed a lunch, for you do get 
awfully hungry sitting on the creek bank 
all afternoon. We were out behind the bam 
digging bait when Father came around the 
comer and saw us. 

“‘I’ve just been looking for you children,’ 
he said. ‘ I want you to take these pumpkin 
seeds down to the cornfield in the bottom and 
plant them.’ Then, seeing our fishing tackle, 
130 


Pumpkin Seed 


131 

he added, ‘It won’t take long, and when 
you finish you may go fishing.’ 

“Of course Charlie and I were disap¬ 
pointed. We had n’t been fishing that year 
yet. It had been a late spring, with lots of 
rain, and on the bright days there had been 
so many things that we could do around the 
house and garden that we could n’t be spared 
to go fishing. And now, with everything all 
ready, to give it up even for an hour or two 
was a trial. 

“We started for the cornfield, Charlie 
carrying the poles and the can of bait and I 
the lunch and the paper sack of pumpkin 
seed. The pumpkins we were to plant were 
to be used to feed the stock—cow pumpkins 
they were called, and they were big and 
coarse-grained and not good for pies. 

“Well, Charlie and I started down at the 
lower end of the field and we planted a few 
seeds. But there was such a lot of the seed 
and the field was so big and the lure of the 
creek with the shade under the willows and 
the fish biting was so great that we could 
think of nothing else. We stopped to examine 
our bait to see if the worms were still living. 
When we went back to work Charlie wondered 


132 


Early Candlelight Stories 


what was the use of planting so many old 
pumpkins, anyhow, when Father had already 
planted as many as usual in the upper 
cornfield. 

“‘We might plant a whole lot of seed 
at once,’ he said, ‘but still it would take us 
a long time.’ 

‘“I know what to do!’ I cried, ‘Let's 
hide the sack of seed in this old stump and 
come back tomorrow and plant them.' After 
a few half-hearted protests from Charlie, 
this was what we did. We buried the sack 
of seed in an old, rotten stump, covered it 
deep with the soft, rich loam, and away we 
went to the creek to fish. 

“Charlie baited both our hooks with the 
fishworms, and we would spit on our bait 
each time for luck. The charm must have 
worked, for when it was time to go home 
we had caught a nice lot of sunfish, tobacco 
boxes, silversides, and suckers. Truman 
cleaned them for us, and Mother dipped 
them in corn meal and fried them a golden 
brown. We had them for supper, and 
every one said how good they were and no 
one thought to ask us anything about the 
pumpkin seeds. 


Pumpkin Seed 


i 33 


“I thought about them that night after 
I had gone to bed and wished that we had 
stayed and planted them as Father had told 
us to. But then Charlie and I would go 
down first thing in the morning, dig the 
sack out of the stump, plant the seeds, and 
everything would be all right. 

“But it began to rain in the night, and it 
rained all the next day. The day after, it 
was too wet, and the day after that Charlie 
was busy. Then it rained again, and after 
a while I forgot all about the pumpkin seeds. 
It was several weeks before I thought of them 
again. You couldn’t guess what made me 
think of them then, so I will tell you. 

“When we went to meeting on Sundays, 
Charlie and I always tried to remember the 
text of the sermon to say when we got home, 
for Mother was almost sure to ask us what 
it was. One Sunday I was saying it over 
and over to myself so that I could remember 
it, when suddenly the meaning of it came to 
me and I was surprised to find that it had 
something to do with me. The text was 
‘Be sure your sin will find you out,’ and in 
a flash I knew it meant that if you did any¬ 
thing wrong you could n’t keep people from 


134 


Early Candlelight Stories 


knowing about it. Then I thought of the 
buried pumpkin seed which Charlie and I 
had meant to go back and plant. 

“ Father had never said a word about the 
pumpkins not coming up, though he must 
surely have noticed it long before this. Per¬ 
haps he thought the seed had been bad, but 
still it was queer he had never mentioned it. 

“That night I couldn’t sleep for thinking 
how wrong it had been for Charlie and me 
to deceive Father about the pumpkin seed. 
Even the fact that we had meant to go back 
and plant them did n’t make me feel any 
less guilty. When I did fall asleep, I dreamed 
that the room was full of pumpkins with ugly 
grinning faces like jack-o’-lanterns. They 
laughed and mocked at me and pressed closer 
and closer until I wakened with a frightened 
cry, and when Mother asked me what had 
scared me I could n’t tell her. 

“In the morning I talked it over with 
Charlie. We agreed to go to Father imme¬ 
diately and tell him that we had not planted 
the pumpkin seeds. 

“But Father had gone to Clayville on 
business for a couple of days. When he 
came back, before we had a chance to see 


Pumpkin Seed 


i35 


him alone he told us at dinner before all the 
others that the pumpkin crop in the bottom 



I dreamed the room was full of pumpkins with ugly grinning faces 


cornfield was to be Charlie’s and mine. He 
said that we could keep as many as we 
wanted to for jack-o’-lanterns on Hallow¬ 
e’en and he would pay us ten cents apiece 
for all the rest. Think of that! Ten cents 
apiece for all the pumpkins we raised, and 
we knew that there would n’t be any pump¬ 
kins! I looked across the table at Charlie, 
and his face was very red. I could n’t say 
a word, but when Father left the table we 
both followed him and told him all about 









136 Early Candlelight Stories 

the pumpkin seeds, and how the text had 
started us thinking, and everything. Father 
listened without a word till we had finished. 
Then much to our surprise he said, ‘I’ve 
known for a good while what you did with 
the pumpkin seed. When I saw the num¬ 
ber of fish you caught that afternoon, I 
wondered how you had planted the pumpkin 
seed so quickly. I had told Mother they 
were to belong to you two to do with as you 
pleased, but I did not intend to tell you 
until later. Then when I found out that 
you had not planted the seeds I waited 
for you to come to me. I believe you have 
learned a lesson from this experience which 
you will not forget. Come along with me. 
I want to show you something.’ 

“ Wonderingly, without a word, we fol¬ 
lowed Father to the cornfield and straight 
to where the old rotten stump in the lower 
end of the field had been. But when we 
got there we could not see the stump, for 
coming out of it and all over it and com¬ 
pletely covering it, were myriads of pumpkin 
vines—not big strong vines like the ones 
that grew in the fields, but thin, sickly 
vines crowding each other for space. 


Pumpkin Seed 


137 


“The soil in the stump had been so rich 
and light that, though the sack of seeds had 
been deeply covered, when soaked with rain 
the seeds had sprouted and forced their way 
through the sack and up to the light and 
air. The vines told Father where the pump¬ 
kin seeds were as plainly as if they could 
have spoken. 

“And now, good night, my dears, and 
don't forget to say your prayers, and I’ll 
try to think up a good story for next time.” 


A SCHOOL FOR SISTER BELLE 


“It was during the third year of the war 
that sister Belle got her certificate to teach. 
Our school had been closed for a year, first 
because there were no teachers, all the 
young men having enlisted, and secondly 
because there was no money to pay a teacher. 
The few schools in the county had been 
given out before Belle got her certificate. 
She was awfully disappointed, for she wanted 
to go to the academy in the spring and she 
did n’t think Father could spare the money 
to send her, times being so hard. 

“But since she couldn’t get a school she 
would make the best of it. She would help 
Aggie and Truman and Charlie and me at 
home, and she promised to teach the Brierly 
children, too. Then the Orbisons wanted to 
come, and to save Mother the fuss and dirt 
so many children would make in the house, 
Belle said she would hold school in the school- 
house and let any one attend who wanted to. 

“‘It will give me experience, anyway,’ 
she said, ‘and dear knows the children need 
some one to teach them!’ 


138 


A School for Sister Belle 139 

“‘Why don’t you let them pay you?’ 
Aggie suggested. ‘A dollar apiece a month 
for each pupil would n’t be a bit too much.’ 

“But Belle said some of them couldn’t 
pay and they were the ones who needed 
schooling the most. And the ones who 
could pay probably would n’t, because the 
county should pay for a teacher. 

“So one Saturday in October, armed with 
brooms and buckets, window cloths and 
scrubbing brushes and a can of soft soap, 
we set out to clean the schoolhouse. We 
scrubbed the floor and the desks and polished 
the stove and cleaned the windows, and on 
the next Monday, the date set for the open¬ 
ing of all the schools in the district, sister 
Belle took her place at the teacher’s old desk. 

“It wasn’t a very different opening from 
the one she had planned and looked forward 
to so eagerly. The only difference was that 
there would be no payment for Belle at the 
end of the term. 

“The last pupil to start in was Joe Slater. 
He was a tall, strong boy of seventeen, but 
was not considered very bright. He was a 
fine hand to work, though, and from plough¬ 
ing time in the spring until the corn husking 


140 Early Candlelight Stories 

was over in the fall, he was always busy. 
During the winter months he did odd jobs 
and went to school, but he had never got 
beyond the first-reader class. Because he 
had nothing to do he had always been more 
or less troublesome in school, and the very 
first day he came he threw paper wads and 
whispered and teased the younger children. 

“ Belle found that he knew the first reader 
'by heart.’ More to encourage Joe than 
for any other reason, she promoted him to 
the second reader. It was hard to tell 
whether pupil or teacher was the most 
astonished to find that Joe was actually 
learning to read. Belle helped him before 
and after school, and Joe became a model 
pupil and refused to do any work that would 
make him miss a day of school. He always 
came early in the morning and had the fire 
going and wood enough in for all day by the 
time Belle got there. 

“So Belle was surprised to find Joe’s seat 
empty one snowy morning in December. 
His sister Nancy said he had gone to the 
railroad in a sled to get some freight for Mr. 
Grove. They lived on Mr. Grove’s place, 
and Joe could not well refuse to do this for 


A School for Sister Belle 


141 



On the steps a big man was stamping his feet and shaking 
the snow from a fur-collared great-coat 


him. Nancy did say, though, that Joe had 
wanted to wait until Saturday, but Mr. 
Grove was afraid the sledding snow would 
go off before that time. So Joe had started 
long before daylight, hoping to get back to 
school in time for the afternoon session. 

“About half-past eleven there was a loud 
knock on the door. It was snowing and 
blowing, and we all turned around to look 
when Belle went to open the door. On the 
steps a big man in a fur cap was stamping 
his feet and shaking the snow from a fur- 
collared great-coat. Belle said afterward 
















142 Early Candlelight Stories 

that she knew him instantly—it was 
the new county superintendent—but she 
could n’t imagine why he had come. She 
had seen him at institute in Clayville, but 
none of us children had ever seen him before. 

“Belle soon found from his talk that he 
thought he was in the Cherry Flat school. 
When she told him where he was and the 
peculiar circumstances of our school, he was 
very much surprised. 

“‘Why, I can’t understand it at all,’ he 
said. ‘I was talking to the station agent 
this morning, asking how to get to Cherry 
Flat school, and a boy who was warming 
himself at the stove spoke up and offered to 
take me there. He was on a sled and of 
course I jumped at the chance. He let 
me out at the forks of the road, and here I 
am, three miles from the Cherry Flat school, 
you say.’ 

“‘I bet it was Joe,’ Betty Bard whispered 
to me. 

“Now that the superintendent was there 
and could n’t get away until the storm let 
up, he made a speech. Then he listened to 
our recitations and asked Belle a great many 
questions, such as how many pupils she had, 


A School for Sister Belle 143 

where they lived, and whether she received 
any pay at all for teaching. She told him 
about her certificate and her failure to get 
a school, and he wrote it all down in a little 
notebook. 

“The storm grew worse and worse. The 
wind whistled around the schoolhouse and 
rattled the windows, and the falling snow 
looked like a thick white blanket. 

“Belle asked us to share our dinners with 
the superintendent, and we did. He sat on 
one of the desks and told us stories while he 
ate everything we gave him—bread and 
apple butter, hard-boiled eggs, ham sand¬ 
wiches, pickles, doughnuts, mince and apple 
pies, and cup cakes. When he left we were 
all good friends and we filled his pockets 
with apples. He said he would eat them as 
he walked along to Cherry Flat school, but he 
didn't have to walk. Truman took him in 
our sled, and we all stood in the door and 
waved until he was out of sight. 

“No one could get Joe to say a word 
about the superintendent’s visit, but every¬ 
body thought he had brought him there on 
purpose, hoping in this way to help Belle. 
He was a great deal smarter than people 


144 


Early Candlelight Stories 


gave him credit for, and Belle had helped 
him and he wanted to do something for her. 

“But if sister Belle nourished any secret 
hopes that the unexpected visit would help 
her in any way, she gave them up as the 
weeks went by and she heard nothing from 
the superintendent. 

“School went on just as usual, though. 
Christmas came, and Belle did n’t have 
money for the usual treat. But we had 
lots of sorghum molasses, and Mother let 
her have a taffy pulling in our kitchen and 
we had lots of fun. 

“Everybody got along well in their books 
and we were going to have last day exercises, 
as we always did, with recitations and songs 
and games. Belle staid late at the school- 
house the evening before and reached home 
just as Truman came in from the postoffice. 
He handed her a long, thin envelope and 
she tore it open and read the letter it con¬ 
tained. Before she got through she was 
dancing all around the kitchen, laughing and 
crying at the same time, and Mother took 
the letter from her hand and read it aloud. 

“I can’t remember how that letter read, 
but it was from the board of education. 


A School for Sister Belle 145 

They said they had decided to put our school 
back on the pay roll and that they understood 
that Belle had taught it in a very satisfactory 
manner since the opening of the term. She 
was to send her record of attendance and 
they would forward the five salary vouchers 
of thirty dollars each, which were due her. 
There was some more about its being unusual, 
but that they felt she deserved it. It was no 
wonder Belle was so happy, was it?” 


10 


ANDY’S MONUMENT 


Bobby and Alice and Pink had been telling 
Grandma about the soldiers’ monument that 
was to be placed in the courthouse yard. 

“It is to be made of granite,” said Bobby, 
“and the names of all the soldiers from this 
county who died or were killed in the war 
will be cut on one side of it.” 

“Well, well,” said Grandma thoughtfully, 
“that makes me think of a monument I 
knew about long ago, but this monument 
wasn’t made of granite.” 

“Marble, may be,”suggested Alice. 

“No, not marble, either. You never heard 
of a monument like this. But, there, I 
might as well tell you about it,” and Grandma 
polished her spectacles, found her knitting, 
and began: 

“This monument was for a soldier, too. 
Andy Carson was his name. He was a very 
young soldier, only fifteen years old, but 
large for his age, and he ran away from 
home and enlisted. Three times he ran 
away and twice his father brought him back, 
but the third time he let him go. 

146 


Andy's Monument 


147 


"But poor Andy never wore a uniform or 
saw a battle. He died in camp two weeks 
after he had enlisted and he was buried in 
our cemetery, with only Father to read a 
chapter out of the Bible and say a prayer, 
because the preacher was clear at the other 
end of the circuit. 

" Right away Mrs. Carson began to plan 
for a monument for Andy. At first it was 
to be just an ordinary monument, but the 
more she thought about it the grander she 
wanted it to be. Nothing could be too good 
for Andy. He should have the biggest monu¬ 
ment in the cemetery—a life-size figure. 
But she could n’t decide whether to have 
the figure draped in a robe with a dove 
perched on the shoulder or to have it wearing 
a uniform and cap. Mrs. Carson finally 
settled on the uniform, though she couldn’t 
give up the idea of the dove, so there was 
to be a dove in one outstretched hand. 

“But the Carsons had no money and they 
didn’t like to work. If anyone mentioned 
work to Mr. Carson, he would begin always 
to talk about the misery in his back. When 
brother Charlie had a job he didn’t want 
to do, he would bend over with his hand 


148 Early Candlelight Stories 

on his back, screw up his face as if he were 
in great pain, and say, 'Oh, that misery in 
my back!' 

“Mother said Mrs. Carson had not been 
lazy as a girl, but that she had grown dis¬ 
couraged from having so many to do for and 
nothing to do with. Sometimes she came to 
visit Mother, because Mother was always 
nice to everybody. She was very tall and 
thin, with a short waist, and she wore the 
longest skirts I ever saw and a black slat 
sunbonnet. 

“There was a big family of children—a 
girl, Maggie, older than Andy, and Willie, a 
boy a year younger, and four or five smaller 
children. The older ones came to school 
part of the time, but none of them ever came 
to church—partly because they had no proper 
clothes, I suppose. 

“They lived on a farm left them by Mrs. 
Carson’s father. The land was all run down 
and worn out. It was covered with briars 
and broom sage and a stubby growth of trees. 
Fences were down, and the buildings were 
unpainted and old. 

“So, though the Carsons talked a great 
deal about Andy’s monument, no one ever 


Andy's Monument 


149 


thought they would get one. But Mother 
said it was the first thing Mrs. Carson had 
really wanted for years and years and people 
generally got the things they wanted most 
if they were willing to work hard for 
them. And it turned out that all the Carsons 
were willing to work hard for Andy’s monu¬ 
ment. It was astonishing the way they 
worked. 

“Mrs. Carson and the children started 
with the house and yard. They cleaned the 
rubbish off the yard and raked and swept it 
and planted flowers. They made the stove 
wood into a neat pile and swept up the 
chips and patched the fence and white¬ 
washed it. By this time Mr. Carson had 
the fever, too. He started to clear off 
the land, all the family helping him. All 
summer long they worked, early and late, 
cutting out the briars and underbrush, 
burning broom sage, building fences, and 
by fall you wouldn’t have known it for 
the same place. They worked for a num¬ 
ber of other people, too, and made a little 
money, besides taking seed corn and a pair 
of little pigs and other things they needed in 
payment. 


150 Early Candlelight Stories 

“Well, it took a lot of money for a monu¬ 
ment like Andy’s was to be, but the Carsons 
worked and saved for it. It seemed as if 
they had set a new standard for themselves 
and were trying hard to live up to Andy’s 
monument. 

“They painted the house and repaired 
and whitewashed the outbuildings and put 
a paling fence around the front yard. They 
got lace curtains and a store carpet for 
their best room, and when Father got us a 
piano, Mrs. Carson bought our organ for 
a trifle. They got new clothes and dishes 
and table-cloths, and every Sunday they 
all came to meeting and asked folks home 
with them to dinner just as anybody 
else did. 

“Dave Orbison was courting Maggie, and 
Willie was ready to go to the academy. He 
wanted an education and came to our house 
every week to get Truman to help him with 
his studies or to borrow books. If it had n’t 
been for the monument, people would have 
forgotten that the Carsons had ever been 
considered lazy or shiftless. 

“But Mrs. Carson was always talking 
about the monument. She had never had 


Andy's Monument 151 

Andy’s funeral sermon preached, and she 
planned to have it preached the Sunday 
after the monument was set up. 

“And at the end of three years they had 
enough money, but for some reason they 
did n’t get the monument. Everybody won¬ 
dered about it. Weeks went by, and still 
no news of the monument. Willie often 
came to our house, but he never mentioned 
it. Then one day Mrs. Carson came. She 
had a horse now, and she looked longer 
and thinner than ever in her black calico 
riding skirt. 

“Mother was fitting a dress on me—a red 
wool delaine for Sundays—but Mrs. Carson 
dropped into a chair without even glancing 
at it. 

“‘Mrs. Purviance/ she began immediately, 
‘ I want your honest opinion about something. 
For over three years now we’ve been saving 
for Andy’s monument, and until a few weeks 
ago I never had a thought but that that 
was the right thing to do with the money. 
But one night I got to thinking that here 
was Willie wanting an education, and Maggie 
getting ready to be married and no money 
to help her set up housekeeping, and Lissy 


152 


Early Candlelight Stories 


longing for music lessons, and I could n’t 
sleep for thinking. And, Mrs. Purviance, I 
haven’t had a minute’s peace since. That’s 



“ Mrs. Carsony said Mother, “you have given Andy a better 
monument than you can ever set up in the cemetery' 


why I have n’t ordered the monument. I 
can’t make up my mind to it. It’ll be a 
long time before we can help Willie much 
if we spend the monument money. It looks 
as if he ought to have his chance. And of 
course the money won’t help Andy any, 
but I had set my heart on a fine monument 
for him. I don’t know what to do,” and she 
started to cry. 









Andy's Monument 


i53 


“‘Mrs. Carson,’ Mother said gently, and 
there were tears in her eyes, too, ‘if you 
want to know what I really think, I’ll tell 
you. I think that as far as honoring Andy 
is concerned you and your family have 
already given him a much better monu¬ 
ment than any you can ever set up in the 
cemetery.’ 

“Mother ran a pin straight into me and 
I jumped, and Mother said she was done 
with me for a while. I went out, and that 
was the last I heard of the monument until 
the Sunday Andy’s funeral sermon was to be 
preached. 

“There had been so much talk about the 
monument and the long put-off funeral sermon 
that there was an unusually large crowd at 
the church that day. 

“And some of them were disappointed, 
for when the service was over and we filed 
out, the Carsons first, past the flower-decked 
graves to the comer where Andy was buried, 
there was Andy’s grave adorned with only a 
plain little head stone. But grouped around 
it stood his family, and the way that family 
had improved in the three years since Andy’s 
death—well, as my mother said, that was 


154 


Early Candlelight Stories 


a pretty fine monument for Andy, don’t 
you think so? 

“And now don’t forget your ‘apple a day,’ 
and good night to everybody.” 


MEMORY VERSES 


Grandma had been reading aloud from 
Pink’s Sunday-school paper and when she 
finished she said: 

“We didn’t have anything like this when 
I was a little girl. We didn’t even have 
any Sunday school. The nearest thing to 
Sunday school was when we recited our 
memory verses on meeting day. Every week 
we learned so many verses from the Bible, 
and on meeting day the preacher heard us 
recite them. 

“I remember one year—it was Reverend 
Bard’s second year—that in order to get 
the children to take more interest in learn¬ 
ing the verses, the preacher offered a Testa¬ 
ment to the on£ who could say the most 
verses by a certain time. We were all eager 
to get the Testament, and we did study 
harder than usual. 

“The contest was to take place on Sunday 
afternoon. There was to be preaching in 
the morning, dinner on the grounds, and in 
the afternoon a prayer meeting and the 
memory-verse contest. There would be a 


i55 


156 Early Candlelight Stories 

large crowd, and anyone who wanted to 
could try for the Testament. Even the 
smallest children would say what verses 
they knew. 

“ Charlie was always hunting for the short¬ 
est verses, and he had n’t learned very many 
of any kind till toward the last. Then he 
learned five or six a day and carried a Bible 
around in his pocket wherever he went and 
studied every spare minute. 

“I had been getting my verses regularly 
every week and I had a good memory. So 
I was n’t much afraid of anyone beating me 
except Charlie or Annie Brierly or maybe 
Betty Bard, the preacher’s granddaughter 
Betty knew a lot of verses, but at the last 
minute she was likely to get to thinking of 
something else and forget them. 

“On Saturday Betty and Annie came to 
see me, and Betty said that Lissy Carson 
was going to try for the Testament, too. 
The Carsons had n’t been coming to meeting 
very long, but Betty, when she had been 
there to call with her grandfather a few days 
before, said Lissy knew fifty-one verses. 

“‘And I think she ought to have the 
Testament,’ announced Betty, ‘Grandfather 


Memory Verses 


157 


said it would encourage the whole family. 
If you two girls and Charlie and I let 
her say more verses than we do, she would 
get it.' 

“‘But if we knew more verses and just 
let her get the Testament on purpose,' put 
in Annie, ‘it wouldn’t be right, would it?’ 

“‘But see how hard she’s trying,’ argued 
Betty. ‘The Carsons have nothing but the 
big family Bible, and Lissy has to stand by 
the table and learn her verses out of it. If 
she works so hard and does n’t get anything, 
she might think there’s no use in trying/ 

“Annie looked stubborn. 

“ My Father said he would give me a dollar 
if I get the Testament,’ she said, ‘and I 
mean to try for it. You can do as you like, 
Betty, but I will say all the verses I know.’ 

‘“I should hate to have Lissy get ahead 
of me,’ I explained, ‘when I ’ve always gone to 
meeting and she hasn’t and I am in the 
fifth reader and she is only in the third. It 
would look as if she was so much smarter 
than I am and Mother hates to have us 
thought a bit backward.’ 

“At these arguments Betty herself looked 
uncertain. 


158 Early Candlelight Stories 

“‘ Well, maybe you’re right,’ she remarked. 
'I know it would disappoint Grandfather if 
I only said a few verses, for he says I should 
be an example to the other children.’ Then 
she saw Charlie picking up some early 
apples in the orchard. ‘Let’s see what 
Charlie says,’ she cried, and was off across 
the road with Annie and me following. 

“When we had explained the matter to 
Charlie, he looked at us scornfully. ‘ I never 
saw such sillies,’ he said. ‘If you girls pull 
out, though, it will make it that much easier 
for the rest of us. I’m for the Testament.’ 
Then he pretended he was reading from 
a book he held in his hand, ‘Presented to 
Charles Purviance by his pastor for excell¬ 
ence—.’ Betty started after him, and then 
Annie and I chased him, too, and we got 
to playing ‘tag’ and forgot all about Lissy 
and the Testament. 

“Sunday was a beautiful day, bright and 
sunshiny. From miles around people came 
to attend the all-day service. There were 
many strangers. With the Orbisons came 
Mr. Orbison’s sister and her granddaughter, 
a little girl about my age named Mary Lou, 
who was visiting away from California. 


Memory Verses 


i59 



Mary Lou wore a silk dress and lace mitts and carried a pink parasol 


Mary Lou wore a silk dress and lace mitts 
and a hat with long velvet streamers and she 
carried a pink parasol. 

“ Tables had been set up in the grove across 
from the church, and at noon, after the morn¬ 
ing sermon, dinner was served. There was 
fried chicken and boiled ham and pickles and 
pie and cake and everything good you could 
think of, and the people had all they could eat. 

“ After dinner Mrs. Orbison brought Mary 
Lou over to where Annie and Betty and I 
were sitting and left her to get acquainted, so 
she said. But Mary Lou didn’t want to 








160 Early Candlelight Stories 

get acquainted with us. She just wanted 
to talk about herself. She told us that she 
had three silk dresses and eleven dolls and a 
string of red beads and a pony not much 
larger than a dog and ever so many other 
things. 

“ * Don’t you have a silk dress for Sunday ?' 
she asked, looking at my blue sprigged lawn, 
which until then I had thought very nice. 

“ ‘No,’ I replied. And I added crossly, 
VMy mother says it’s not what you’ve got 
that counts but what you are,’ though I’m 
free to confess I did n’t get much consolation 
from this thought, then. 

“ Pretty soon we went into the church, and 
after a prayer and some songs the smaller 
children began to go up one by one to say 
their verses. Brother Bard kept count and 
as they finished each verse he would call out 
the number of it. 

“After a while he came to Lissy Carson, 
and every one was surprised when she kept 
on until at last she had recited sixty-one verses 
two more than anyone else had given so far. 

“I looked at Betty, but she sat with down¬ 
cast eyes and flushed cheeks. Annie looked 
scared, and I could n’t see Charlie. Then 


Memory Verses 


161 


Betty was called on and she said fifty-eight 
verses and quit. 

“ 'Are you sure that is all, Betty?’ her 
grandfather said in a puzzled tone. 

“ ' Yes, sir,’ Betty replied and took her seat. 

"I came next and I had made up my mind 
by then that I would n’t keep Lissy from 
getting the Testament, so I recited fifty-nine 
verses. I can still see the amazement in 
Mother’s face when I sat down. 

'‘Annie Brierly gave fifty-nine and Charlie 
sixty, though of course, like Betty and me, 
they each knew many more verses than that. 
Lissy would get the Testament, and I was 
glad of it when I saw her sitting there so 
proud and happy. Why did n’t Reverend 
Bard give it to her at once and be done with 
it? Whatever was he waiting for? Then I 
saw. Mary Lou, the strange little girl, was 
tripping up front in all her finery as self- 
possessed as you please. 

“And what do you think? She said sixty- 
three verses and got the Testament! 

“Well, you can imagine how Annie and 
Betty and Charlie and I felt, though Charlie 
would n’t talk about it even to me. He 
never admitted but what he’d said all the 


11 


162 


Early Candlelight Stories 


verses he knew, though I knew better. 
Had n’t I heard him at home reciting chapter 
after chapter when he thought no one was 
listening? 

“We girls went around behind the church to 
talk it over, and Annie cried a little, and 
Betty stamped her foot and said she was n’t 
an example any more and she wished Mary 
Lou would tear her parasol and lose her 
mitts and get caught in a rain and spoil her 
hat. And we all got to laughing and forgot 
our disappointment. 

“And now it’s bedtime for three little 
children I know.” 


THE COURTING OF POLLY ANN 


One evening when Bobby and Alice and 
Pink came to Grandma’s room they found 
her sitting before the fire rocking gently to 
and fro and looking thoughtfully at some¬ 
thing she held in her hand. When they had 
drawn up their stools and sat down, she 
handed the object to them and they passed 
it from one to the other, examining it eagerly. 

It was a button—a pearl button of a pecu¬ 
liar shape, fancifully carved. The holes 
were filled with silk thread, attaching to 
the button a bit of faded flannel as if it had 
been forcibly torn from a garment. 

“I found that button today,” Grandma 
began, “when I was looking for something 
else, in a little box in the bottom of my 
trunk. 1 had forgotten I had it. It came 
off my brother Stanley’s fancy waistcoat, and 
the way of it was this: 

“Stanley had been away at school all year, 
and when he came home he had some stylish 
new clothes—among other things a pair of 
lavender trousers and a waistcoat to match 
and a ruffled shirt and some gay silk cravats. 

163 


164 Early Candlelight Stories 

“ Every Sunday he dressed up as fine as 
could be, and all the girls were nice to him. 
But he did n’t pay any attention to any of 
them except Polly Ann Nesbit, who was the 
prettiest girl in all the country round about. 
Some people called Polly Ann’s hair red, but 
it was n’t. It was a deep rich auburn, and 
she had brown eyes and a fair creamy skin. 
Besides being pretty she was sweet-tempered, 
though lively and gay. 

“Polly Ann had so many beaux that when 
she was sixteen every one thought she would 
be married before the year was out, and her 
father—Polly Ann was his only child — said 
that he would n’t give Polly Ann to any man. 
He need n’t have worried, for Polly Ann was 
so hard to please that she was still unwed at 
twenty when Stanley came home from school. 
By that time her father was telling every 
one how much land he meant to give Polly 
Ann when she married. 

“ Stanley had n’t been home very long until 
he, like all the other boys, was crazy about 
Polly Ann, and she favored him more than 
any of the others. Stanley went to see her 
every week and escorted her home from 
parties and singings and took her to ride on 


The Courting of Polly Ann 165 

Sunday afternoons in his new top buggy. 
Father suspected he would be wanting to get 
married, and told him he could have the wheat 
field on what we called the upper place, to 
put in a winter crop for himself. 

“Then one night at a party at Orbison’s 
Stanley wore his new lavender waistcoat. 
Polly Ann wagered the other girls that she 
could have a button off the waistcoat for 
her button string, and they wagered her 
she could n’t. 

“That night when Stanley asked Polly Ann 
if he might see her home she said he could if 
he would give her a button off his waistcoat. 
It must have been hard for Stanley, for he 
knew he could never wear the waistcoat again 
if he did as she asked and that he could n’t 
go with Polly Ann any more if he refused. 
He had no knife and he would n’t borrow one, 
so he just wrenched a button off and gave it 
to Polly Ann. 

“When the girls went upstairs to put on 
their wraps, Polly Ann showed the button 
to them and they had lots of fun about it. 
The next morning Aggie told Stanley what 
Polly Ann had done and how every one was 
laughing at him. 


i66 


Early Candlelight Stories 


“Stanley was at breakfast. There was no 
one in the kitchen but Stanley and Aggie and 
me, and they did n’t pay any attention to me. 
I remember how red Stanley’s face got when 
Aggie told him, and his chin, which had a 
dimple, seemed suddenly to get square like 
Father’s. I thought to myself that Polly 
Ann Nesbit had better look out, for, as 
Father often told us, ‘he who laughs last, 
laughs best.’ Stanley did get even with 
Polly Ann, though not in the way we thought 
he would. 

“Before he went to work that morning he 
wrote her a letter and paid Charlie a quarter 
for taking it to her. Charlie told me that 
Polly Ann was in the front yard by herself 
when he gave her the letter and when .she 
read it she just laughed and laughed, but that 
she put it in her pocket for safekeeping. 

“Stanley was as nice as ever to her when 
they met, but he did n’t go to see her any 
more or take her buggy riding on Sunday 
’ afternoons. He took Mother or me instead, 
and I thought it very nice. Stanley went 
right ahead ploughing up his wheat field just 
as if nothing had happened, and when he got 
through with that he began to fix up a little 



Polly Ann was in the front yard when Charlie gave her the letter 
















i68 


Early Candlelight Stories 


cottage where brother Joe had lived for two 
years after he was married. 

“He built a new kitchen, at the side instead 
of at the back where most people built their 
kitchens, so his wife could see the road when 
she was working, he said. And he added a 
front porch with railings and a seat at each 
end and painted the house white and set out 
rose bushes and honeysuckle vines and began 
to buy the furniture. 

“Of course it caused a great deal of talk, 
and every one wondered whom Stanley was 
going to marry. The girls would laugh about 
Stanley’s house and say they would n’t marry 
a man who would n’t let them furnish their 
own house. And often they would tease 
Polly Ann, but she would only toss her head 
and say nothing. 

“And all the time Stanley worked away, 
singing and whistling as happy as could be. 
When any one questioned him, he would say 
he meant to keep bachelor’s hall, or that he 
had n’t decided what he would do, or that he 
planned to marry the sweetest girl he knew. 
Belle and Aggie were wild to know what girl 
he meant. They tried in every way to find 
out, but they could n’t. 


The Courting of Polly Ann 169 

“Stanley often talked in his sleep, and they 
would listen to hear whether he mentioned a 
girl’s name, but they could never understand 
what he said. Some one told the girls to tie 
a string around Stanley’s great toe and when 
he talked to pull the string gently and he 
would repeat clearly what he had just said. 

“One night Belle and Aggie did this, but 
instead of a string they used a piece of red 
yarn. When they were pulling it, it snapped 
in two, and Stanley woke up and found the 
yarn on his toe and jumped out of bed and 
chased the girls squealing and giggling into 
their room, and Father came out to see what 
was the matter. 

“But finally the house was done, even to 
the last shining pan, and Mother had given 
Stanley so many quilts and blankets and 
things that Charlie grumbled and said there 
would be nothing left for the rest of us. 

“ One afternoon I was up at the cottage with 
Stanley planting some of Mother’s wonderful 
yellow chrysanthemums by the garden fence. 
Stanley was building a lattice at the end of 
the porch for a climbing rose which he had 
only just set out, when the front gate clicked 
and there, coming up the path, was Polly 


i7° Early Candlelight Stories 

Ann Nesbit. Her cheeks were rosy and she 
was laughing. 

“ ‘I’ve brought it myself, Stanley,’ she 
cried gaily. ‘You said in your letter to send 
you the button when I was ready to marry 
you, but I’ve brought it instead. Do you— 
do you still want it?’ and she held out this 
little button, the very one Stanley had pulled 
off his lavender waistcoat to please her. 

“I looked at Stanley, so straight and tall 
and handsome though he was in his everyday 
clothes, to see what he would do. 

“ ‘Do I want it?’ he cried starting toward 
her. ‘ Why, Polly Ann, I ’ve just been longing 
for that button. I never wanted anything so 
much in my life. I was only afraid you 
wouldn’t give it to me.’ He put his arms 
around her and they went in to look at the 
house. When they had gone in, I saw this 
little button lying on the path almost at my 
feet, and I picked it up and skipped home 
to tell Mother and the girls that Stanley was 
going to marry Polly Ann after all. 

“And now, ‘ ’night, ’night,’ and pleasant 
dreams.’’ 


EARNING A VIOLIN 

“ And you don’t like to practice!” Grandma 
exclaimed in surprise when Bobby told her 
why he did not like to take violin lessons. 
“But you’ll have to practice, you know, or 
you will never learn to play. I knew a boy 
once, who dearly liked to practice. I think 
I ’ll tell you about him. It was my brother 
Charlie. Charlie had wanted a violin ever 
since he was just a little bit of a fellow and 
had first heard old Mr. Potter play on his 
violin. 

'' Mr. Potter was a traveling tailor who went 
around the country making and mending 
men’s clothing. He carried his goods from 
place to place in pack saddles, and he always 
brought his violin along. 

'' In the evenings he would play, and we all 
loved to hear him. He played beautifully. 
All Charlie and I had ever heard before were 
things like 'Pop goes the Weasel,’ or 'Turkey 
in the Straw.’ There was such a difference 
between these tunes and what Mr. Potter 
played that the first time Charlie heard him 
play — 'Annie Laurie,’ I think it was — he 
171 


172 Early Candlelight Stories 

walked up to him and said very solemnly, 
‘I like a violin better than a fiddle/ and 
everybody laughed. 

'‘Years before, Mr. Potter had had a thriv¬ 
ing trade, but when I knew him he did not 
get much to do because store suits for men 
had become common. Mother always found 
some work for him, though, and in his spare 
time he gave violin lessons. 

“He was in our neighborhood several weeks 
each spring, and one winter Charlie deter¬ 
mined to have a violin and be ready to take 
lessons when he came next time. 

“ So right away he began to save money for 
a violin. But there was n’t much Charlie 
could do to earn money, and it looked as 
though he would never get enough for a violin, 
let alone enough for an instruction book and 
lessons. But he did get the violin, and this 
is how it came about. 

“It was one of the coldest winters anyone 
remembered in years. A deep snow lay on 
the ground for weeks and weeks, and the 
roads were frozen hard and as smooth as 
glass. 

“There was a sawmill about eight miles 
down the road from our house, and every 


Earning a Violin 


i73 



“I like a violin better than a fiddle," said Charlie to Mr. Potter 


day we could see men passing on their way 
to the mill with logs. Big iron hooks called 
'dogs' would be driven into the logs and 
fastened to a heavy chain which would be 
hitched to a single-tree, and the log would 
be dragged over the smooth road by one 
horse. It was an easy way to get logs to 
the mill, and every one was hurrying to 
haul as many as possible before the thaw 
came. 

"Father had cut one big walnut log when 
he had been called to serve on jury duty 
and had gone to Clayville to attend court. 
Before he went, Charlie asked him what he 









174 


Early Candlelight Stories 


would do with that one log and Father told 
Charlie he could have it. Charlie could 
hardly believe his ears and he asked Father 
whether he really meant that he could have 
the money for the log if he could get it to 
the mill. Father said that was what he 
meant, but afterward he told Mother he 
never dreamed Charlie would try to do it. 

“But from the first Charlie intended to 
move that walnut log to the mill. He thought 
of nothing else. He made plan after plan. 
He found out from the storekeeper that the 
man who owned the sawmill came to the 
store Saturday afternoons to buy supplies 
for the next week. So when Charlie and I 
went to the store for Mother on the next 
Saturday we sat by the stove to warm 
ourselves and wait for the sawmill man. 
When he came Charlie, asked him whether 
he would buy the walnut log. 

“‘Well, that depends/ said the man, 
looking Charlie over good-naturedly. ‘I'm 
not anxious to lay in any more logs than 
we’ve bargained for. We’re going to move 
Wednesday.’ Then when he saw the dis¬ 
appointment on Charlie’s face he asked, 
‘Pretty good log, is it?’ 


Earning a Violin 


i75 


“‘Oh, yes, sir,' said Charlie eagerly. ‘My 
father said when he cut it that it was first 
grade—woods-grown, ten or twelve feet long.’ 

“‘Well, if that’s the case, I reckon I could 
use it,’ said the man. ‘Be sure to have it 
in by Tuesday, though.’ 

“We went home by way of Mr. Brierly’s, 
and Charlie got permission to borrow his 
logging chain and ‘dogs,’ as they were called. 
We stopped to look at the log, and Charlie 
declared he could get it to the mill without 
any trouble. He could have, too, if it 
had n’t been for the thaw. 

“Sunday was the longest day Charlie ever 
put in. Sometimes he would get discour¬ 
aged and think he could n’t do it at all. 
Then the next minute he would be talking 
about the kind of violin he would get with 
the money the log would bring. Father had 
come home for over Sunday and he would 
help him get started, the older boys being 
away from home. 

“Sunday, after dinner, the weather turned 
slightly warmer, and by four o ’clock a gentle 
rain was falling. When Charlie got up long 
before daylight Monday morning, Mother 
told him that it had rained hard all night. 


176 


Early Candlelight Stories 


He fed the horse and ate his breakfast, and 
Father helped him drive the hooks or dogs 
into the log. Then Charlie was off. 

“He got the log as far as Sugar Creek 
without any trouble, and there what a sight 
met his eyes! Sugar Creek was out of bank, 
and the shallow stream, easily forded the 
year round, was like an angry, rushing little 
river filled with cakes of ice. To ford it 
was clearly impossible till the ice went out, 
and even then the current would be rapid 
and dangerous. There was nothing to do 
but wait, and Charlie unhitched the horse 
and came back home. It was still raining 
and thawing and it did n’t get any better 
all that day. The next morning, though, 
the creek was clear of ice, which was some 
advantage. 

“I went with Charlie and sat on the log, 
feeling very helpless while he walked up 
and down the creek bank trying to think of 
some way to get the log across. The current 
was so strong that, though the horse could 
swim it, he could not swim and drag the 
heavy log along. 

“Charlie examined the foot-log carefully 
and found that it had not been moved by 


Earning a Violin 


177 


the high water, being chained at each bank 
to a big tree. Then he made his plan. He 
fastened some strong rope he had brought 
along to the chain which went around the 
walnut log. Holding the other end of the 
rope, he got on the horse and made him 
swim to the opposite bank. Then he fastened 
the rope at that side to the single-tree and 
urged the horse up the bank. 

“The horse tugged and pulled and finally 
the log moved slowly down into the water. 
Now came the test of Charlie’s plan. If 
the foot-log proved strong enough to with¬ 
stand the jar it would get when the walnut 
log hit it, everything would be all right; 
but if the foot-log gave way, Charlie would 
have to cut the rope quickly to keep the 
horse from being drawn back into the water, 
and the walnut log would float down stream 
and be lost. 

“I almost held my breath when the walnut 
log, sucked rapidly down the stream by the 
swift current, struck the foot-log. I shut 
my eyes tight and did not open them until 
I heard Charlie shouting for joy. The foot- 
log hadn’t budged! Because of the high 
water Charlie thought it would be easy for 


12 


178 Early Candlelight Stories 

the horse to pull the log out on the ground, 
but the log stuck on something under the 
water. Charlie could n’t raise the log up, 
and he had to let it slide back into the water. 
It slid back several times before it finally 
came out on the road. 

“It was nearly noon and Charlie was wet 
to the waist, so he went back home to change 
his clothes and get a fresh horse. After 
dinner he started out again. He got to the 
mill all right and sold the log, and when he 
reached home late that night he had money 
enough for a violin. 

“When Father heard about it, he was so 
proud of him that he doubled the money. 
So Charlie had more than enough for his 
lessons and his instruction book, too.” 

“And did he really like to practice?” 
asked Bobby unbelievingly. 

“Yes, indeed, and he came to be a fine 
violinist and owned a violin that cost a great 
deal of money, but he always kept that first 
one, too. 

“There! Mother’s calling you to bed.” 


AT THE FAIR 


“ We’re going to the fair tomorrow, 
Grandma. It’s childrens’ day,” announced 
Bobby one evening when he and Alice and 
Pink came to Grandma’s room for their 
usual evening call and story. 

“ Are you going, Grandma?” inquired Pink. 

“Why, I may go. I don’t know yet. Do 
you like to go to the fair?” 

“Yeh, boy!” interrupted Bobby eagerly. 
“And this year they’re going to give a pony 
away. I wish I’d get that pony.” 

“That would be nice,” agreed Grandma. 
“I think I’ll tell you tonight about the time 
we took our horse, Prince, to the fair at 
Clayville. I had been to the fair several 
times before, and I always loved to go. To 
get up early in the morning, and dress and 
eat breakfast and start before daylight with 
a big basket of dinner tucked away in the 
back of the surrey; to take the long pleasant 
drive through the cool of the morning and 
at last go through the gates into the fair 
grounds and see all the people and hear the 
noise of the sideshow barkers and the bands 


179 


180 Early Candlelight Stories 

and the balloon whistles and the lowing 
of cattle, uneasy because of their strange 
quarters, was every bit of it a joy to me— 
usually. 

“But this particular year it wasn’t a 
pleasure to look forward to the fair at all, 
even though there was to be a balloon ascen¬ 
sion. For when we went to the fair Father 
was going to take Prince along and sell him 
to a horse dealer. Father had raised Prince, 
and we all loved him, especially Charlie and 
I. He was nine years old, but he still looked 
like a colt. His coat was brown and glossy, 
and he was as playful and active as he had 
ever been. When he l^ad been a colt, the 
older children had petted him and fed him 
sugar. Charlie and I had taken it up when 
they left off, so that he had always been 
used to children and loved them. 

“But Prince had a bad habit, and that 
was the reason he was to be sold. He balked 
whenever a grown person rode or drove him. 
The only thing he was any good for at all 
was carrying Charlie and me to the store 
for Mother. He would take us both at once 
or one at a time wherever we wanted to go 
and never balk once while we were on his 


At the Fair 181 

back. Father said that if Charlie and I had 
been older he would have kept Prince, but 
by the time we would need a horse Prince 
would be too old to be of much use. If he 
could even have been trusted to take Mother 
to church and back when the roads were too 
rough to drive, Father would not have sold 
him. But he was sure to stop some place 
or other, no matter how cold the day, and 
refuse to budge until he got ready. So 
Father said he could not afford to keep him 
any longer, and as none of our neighbors 
would want him he would sel-l him to the 
horse dealer for what he could get. This 
would n’t be much, for of course Father 
would tell the man that Prince balked. 

“So we went to the fair as usual, except 
that Prince went along and was hitched 
with the other horses to the fence until 
Father should get ready to see the horse 
dealer some time after dinner. 

“I went with Mother to Floral Hall, 
which was just a little, whitewashed building, 
and looked at quilts and fancy work and 
cakes and pies and pianos and stoves and 
pumpkins and potatoes until I got tired and 
wandered on ahead of Mother—who was 


182 


Early Candlelight Stories 


busily talking to some people she knew— 
to the door, and there was Charlie waiting 
for us. 

“He had been out to see the cattle and 
poultry. He said our white-faced steer and 
Mother’s bronze turkeys had taken blue 
ribbons and he wanted me to come and 
see them. 

“As we passed our horses, Prince whinnied, 
and I suggested that we say good-by to 
Prince again. So we went over to where he 
was hitched to the fence. We petted him 
and fed him an apple that Charlie had in 
his pocket, and then Charlie said we would 
take a last ride. So he got on first and I 
climbed up behind him and put my arms 
around his waist and we were off. For a 
while Prince trotted about on the grass, and 
then we came to an opening that led into 
the race track. Before we realized what he 
was doing, Prince had turned through this 
opening into the circular track. 

“Two men were standing at the entrance 
talking. One of them was an old man. 
The other, a big man with a wide-rimmed 
felt hat and high-topped boots, waved a 
riding whip at us and called out something 


At the Fair 


183 


that we did not hear as we passed, but 
Prince kept right on. Charlie could have 
turned him around, but he would n’t, though 



Prince turned through the opening that led to the race track 


I begged him to. The trainers were exercis¬ 
ing their horses on the track, but Prince paid 
no attention to anything, looking neither to 
right nor to left. We must have been a 
queer sight—two children riding bareback 
on a big farm horse around the race track. 
By the time we got to the grandstand quite 
a crowd had gathered and they cheered us 
loudly as we passed. Charlie, not to be 
outdone, waved his hat in return. 




184 


Early Candlelight Stories 


“When we got back to the gate we had 
come through, Charlie pulled Prince’s mane 
and he turned out into the grass again. 

“The men were still talking, and the one 
who had called to us patted Prince’s head 
and asked us if we had enjoyed our ride. 
Then, because it looked so silly, we told 
him how we happened to be on Prince at 
a place like that and how Father was going 
to sell him because he balked and would n’t 
work and how sorry we were and afraid 
some one would buy Prince from the horse 
dealer because he was so handsome and then 
beat him when he found he balked. 

“The old gentleman seemed greatly inter¬ 
ested and asked us Father’s name and a 
great many questions about Prince. We 
told him how he would do anything for us 
and was as safe as safe could be. Then we 
hitched Prince to the fence and said good-by 
to him and went to dinner. My dress was 
all wrinkled and my hair was mussed and 
my face burned from being in the sun, and 
Mother was not at all pleased that Charlie 
and I had made ourselves so conspicuous. 

“But we had lots of fun that afternoon 
watching the races and eating peanuts and 


At the Fair 


185 

drinking pink lemonade. There was the 
balloon ascension, and Father took us into 
some of the shows and bought us ice cream, 
molded into cakes and wrapped in paper, 
which was called 'hokie-pokie.’ 

“We had balloons and peanuts and canes 
to take home with us, and when we got in 
the surrey to go home Prince was gone and 
no one mentioned him. But when we were 
well out of town Father said, 'Well, children, 
you may rest easy about Prince. He has a 
good home where he will be well treated, and 
it is largely due to Charlie and Sarah.' And 
then he told us all about it. 

"The man at the gate with the wide felt 
hat and high-topped boots was the horse 
dealer, and the old man with him was hunt¬ 
ing a horse that would be safe for his little 
granddaughter, who had been sick and was 
not strong, to ride and drive. When he saw 
Charlie and me on Prince and heard what 
we said, he knew that Prince was the very 
horse he wanted. 

"So he had bought him from Father and 
paid a hundred dollars, when Father had 
only expected to get fifty dollars at the most. 
He did n’t care a bit because Prince balked, 


186 Early Candlelight Stories 

for no one would use him but the little girl 
and he would be quite as much a pet as 
when we owned him. 

“‘And that extra fifty dollars shall go to 
Charlie and Sarah,’ said Father, ‘for their 
very own.’ 

“The next time Father went to Clayville, 
sure enough, he put twenty-five dollars in 
the bank for Charlie and twenty-five dollars 
for me, and he gave us each a brand new 
bank book with our names on the backs. 
We never saw Prince again, but the man who 
bought him took care of him and was good 
to him until Prince died a few years later. 

“Now what shall I tell you tomorrow 
night? Oh, I know—a Hallowe’en story!” 


HALLOWE’EN 


“Grandma, tomorrow night is Hallowe’en,” 
said Pink one evening when she and Alice 
and Bobby had drawn their stools close 
to Grandma’s knee for their usual good¬ 
night story. 

"Mother makes candy on Hallowe’en,” 
Alice added, "and we have nuts and apples 
and false faces and witches on broomsticks 
and black cats and everything.” 

"And last year we had a party,” said 
Pink. 

"And this year,” put in Bobby eagerly, 
"we’re going to have a great, big pumpkin 
to make a jack-o’-lantern of. I know how 
to do it. Daddy told me, and he’s going 
to help. You hollow out the insides of the 
pumpkin and cut round holes for the eyes 
and make a nose and a mouth with teeth 
and put a candle inside, and I’ll say he’ll 
look scary.” 

"Won’t he though!” exclaimed Grandma. 
"To meet a jack-o’-lantern like that on a 
dark night would make a body shiver. I 
just know it would. Brother Charlie and 
187 


188 Early Candlelight Stories 

I used to save the biggest pumpkins for 
Hallowe’en. In the summer we would pick 
out certain pumpkin vines in the cornfield 
and take special care of them so that the 
pumpkins would grow extra large for jack-o’- 
lanterns. We would keep the dirt loosened 
around the roots, and when the weather was 
dry we would carry water from the creek to 
water them. We would watch to keep the 
worms and bugs off the vines, and then when 
the pumpkins began to get big we’d measure 
around them every few days to see which 
was growing the fastest. Father said we 
did everything but sleep with the pumpkins.” 

“Oh! exclaimed Pink in surprise, “did you 
have Hallowe’en, too, Grandma?” 

“Yes, indeed,” answered Grandma, “but 
we generally called it Hallow Eve in those 
days.” 

And she went on to tell them how the 
evening of October thirty-first has for years 
and years in many different countries been 
celebrated as the eve of All-hallows or All 
Saints’ Day and is called Halloweven or, as 
we most often say, Hallowe’en, and how on 
this particular evening fairies, witches, and 
imps are supposed to be especially active. 


Hallowe'en 


189 

“The young people in our neighborhood 
used to have parties,” said Grandma, “and 
they would make taffy and play games and 
perform tricks intended to reveal to them 
their future husbands and wives. 

“Sometimes these parties would be broken 
up by a crowd of rough boys who had not 
been invited, for if there was a lot of fun 
on Hallowe’en there was also a lot of mischief 
done. Nothing that could be moved was 
safe if left outside. Gates were carried away, 
wheels removed from wagons, farm machin¬ 
ery hidden, well buckets stolen, and roads 
barricaded with great logs. Some people 
took this time to vent their spite on anyone 
they did not like. 

“But these rough, mischievous boys had 
never bothered us, for between the settle¬ 
ment where they lived and our farm was a 
strip of woods in which an old woman known 
as Mother Girty had been buried years and 
years before—in pioneer times, in fact. It 
was said she had been a witch, and even 
when I was a little girl ignorant or super¬ 
stitious folks did not like to pass these 
woods by night. On Hallowe’en they were 
more afraid than ever, since on this night 


190 Early Candlelight Stories 

witches are supposed to roam at will over 
the country. 

“One year Mother said we could have a 
Hallowe’en party at our house. Charlie and 
I gave our biggest pumpkins, and Truman 
made jack-o’-lanterns out of them. Belle 
and Aggie decorated the sitting room with 
autumn leaves and bunches of yellow chrys¬ 
anthemums and draped orange-colored cloth, 
which they had dyed by boiling old sheets 
in sassafras bark and water, around the 
walls. For lights they had the jack-o’- 
lanterns and just common lanterns with the 
orange cloth wrapped about the globes, and 
they put out baskets of apples and nuts. 
In the cellar were rows of pumpkin pies and 
pans of gingerbread for refreshment, when 
the guests should get tired of playing games 
and pulling taffy. 

“When every one had come, Aggie made 
the taffy. But she didn’t cook the first 
batch long enough and it would n’t harden. 
They tried to pull it, but the way it stuck 
to their hands was awful, and such squealing 
and laughing you never heard. It kept 
Charlie and me busy bringing water for 
them to wash off the taffy. 


Hallowe'en 


191 

“The girls put another kettle of molasses 
on right away, and while the taffy was being 
made Charlie and I slipped around the house 
to put a tick-tack on Mother’s window. 
When we had got the tick-tack to working 
and Mother and Father had both come to 
the window to see what it was, though I 
reckon they both knew very well, we started 
back to the kitchen. 

“But we did n’t go in, for there, spread out 
on the porch to cool, were pans and pans of 
taffy. Charlie said we had better take a pan 
for ourselves for fear there might n’t be 
enough to go around and we’d have to do 
without. So he grabbed a pan quickly and 
we ran around to the front of the house with 
it. We meant to go on the front portico, 
but just as we turned the comer we heard a 
noise as if some one were opening the door. 
So- we crouched down close to the house for 
a little bit and then ran out to the lilac bush 
by the front gate. 

“We sat down on the ground and began to 
work the cooler part of the taffy around the 
edge of the pan toward the center, but we 
had no butter to put on our hands to keep 
the taffy from sticking and I offered to go 


192 


Early Candlelight Stories 


to the kitchen to get some. We would then 
start pulling our taffy and quietly slip into 
the house where everyone else would be 
pulling taffy and no one would notice that 
we had not been there all the time. 

“I stood up. It was a pitch dark night, 
but as I started toward the house I thought 
I could see something moving in the side 
yard under the apple tree. I told Charlie. 
He saw it, too, as plainly as could be. It 
was white and it moved about in the most 
terrible way. Oh, to be safe back in the 
house! I clutched Charlie’s arm and trem¬ 
bled all over, I was so afraid. It seemed to 
be coming toward us, and suddenly I could n’t 
stand it any longer and I screamed—the 
most awful, blood-curdling yells—and, pull¬ 
ing Charlie with all my might, I ran for the 
house. 

“The kitchen was filled with frightened 
young people, for no one knew what had 
happened. Just as we tumbled into one 
door three or four white clad figures burst 
into the other door, and it was hard to tell 
which was the worst scared. 

“‘Ghosts!’ sputtered Charlie, gasping 
for breath. ‘Ghosts under the apple tree!’ 


Hallowe'en 


i 93 


Then everybody saw the joke and laughed. 
The ghosts turned out to be some of the big 



I screamed, the most awful blood-curdling yells 


boys who had wrapped themselves in sheets 
to frighten the folks. The opening of the 
front door that Charlie and I had heard 
had been Truman bringing out the sheets, 
but my yells had scared them and they looked 
right sheepish and did n’t say anything 
when Isabel Strang asked them whether 
they thought Mother Girty was after them. 

“In the excitement and confusion, sister 
Belle, who was going down the cellar stairs 
backward with a mirror in her hand, in 


13 







194 Early Candlelight Stories 

which she was supposed to see the face of the 
man she would marry, fell halfway down the 
stairs, and John Strang picked her up and 
sure enough he was the man she married 
later. 

“After that Charlie and I didn’t say 
much, for the pan of taffy was still under the 
lilac bush by the front gate and we did n’t 
want to go into any explanations about why 
we happened to be out there too. 

“Here, here, don’t forget your 'apple a 
day.’ There now, good night, dears.” 


MEASLES 


Bobby and Alice and Pink had the measles. 
First Bobby had taken it with a headache 
and a sick stomach. Then Alice had got 
sick with what seemed to be a cold, and at 
last Pink took it. She just wakened up one 
morning all covered with tiny red spots, and 
of course she knew right away that she had 
the measles, too. 

They had all been awfully sick, but now 
they were better, though they still had to 
stay in a darkened room, which they did n’t 
like a bit. 

"It’s the worst part of the measles,” 
complained Bobby bitterly. "Just like night 
all the time.” 

"Well, then,” said Grandma, who was 
making them a call, "let us pretend that it 
is night and I will tell you a story about 
when I had the measles a long, long time 
ago. 

"In those days measles was considered a 
necessary evil for children. That is, people 
thought that all children must have it one 
time or another, and the younger you were 




196 Early Candlelight Stories 

when you had it the less it would hurt you. 
All our family had had the measles except 
Charlie and me. We had never had the 
measles, and Mother was quite worried about 
it. She said she would n’t expose us on 
purpose, but she did wish we’d get it before 
we got much older and have it over with. 
There had been no measles epidemic in our 
neighborhood for several years, and this is 
how one came about. 

“One Saturday, late in June, Father took 
Charlie and me to Clayville with him. We 
were to visit with Aunt Louisa while he 
attended to his business. He let us out at 
Aunt Louisa’s street and said when he got 
ready to go home he would come after us. 

“Charlie and I started up the street, but 
neither of us had ever been there alone and 
all the houses looked alike to us. We 
could n’t decide which was Aunt Louisa’s. 

“Finally we selected one that we were 
sure was hers and went around to the side 
door and knocked. Instead of Aunt Louisa 
or Mettie, a little girl opened the door and 
told us to come in. This was queer, because 
Aunt Louisa had no children. But I sup¬ 
posed she had company and stepped into a 


Measles 


r 97 

sitting room that was so dark I could hardly 
see a thing at first. We sat very still for a 
while, and I wished that Aunt Louisa would 
come. In the dim light I made out a bed 
in one comer, but I did n’t know there was 
anyone in it until a boy, who had evidently 
been asleep, raised up his head and looked 
at us in surprise. And we looked at him, 
too, for he certainly was funny looking with 
his face all covered with little red spots. 

"‘By, golly!’ he said. ‘What you doin’ 
in here?’ 

"I replied with dignity that we were 
waiting for Aunt Louisa. 

‘“She doesn’t live here,’ he said crossly, 
and lay down again. ‘She lives in the next 
house. Must have been my little sister let 
you in. This is our house and I got the 
measles.’ 

"Charlie and I got out as quickly as we 
could and hurried to Aunt Louisa’s, but we 
decided that we would not tell her or anyone 
else we had had such a glorious, accidental 
chance for the measles. 

‘“We might n’t take the measles after all,’ 
Charlie pointed out, ‘and then Mother would 
be disappointed.’ 


198 Early Candlelight Stories 

“‘I hope we don’t take them on the way 
home,’ I said anxiously. I did n’t know 
then that it takes the measles germ nine 
days to mature and that we were in little 
danger of taking it before that time. 

“The next day, being tired from my trip 
to town, I imagined I was sick and I was 
sure I was taking the measles. Charlie 
examined my face carefully, though, and 
said he could n’t see any red spots. In a 
day or two Charlie thought he was taking 
the disease, but there were no red spots on 
his face, either. 

“‘And if they’re in you Mother says 
they’ve got to come out,’ I told him wisely. 

‘ So as long as it does n’t show on the outside 
we have n’t got it.’ 

“A week passed, and after several more 
false alarms we came to the conclusion 
that we were not going to take the measles 
after all. 

“Sunday the Presiding Elder was to be at 
our church and there were to be two sermons, 
one in the morning and one in the afternoon, 
with a basket dinner in between. Mother 
and the girls were very busy cooking and 
baking, or maybe some of them would have 


Measles 


199 


seen that Charlie and I were not well on 
Saturday. I ached all over, my head most 
of all, and Charlie said he felt sick from his 
head to his toes. We slipped out tothe barn 
and crawled up in the hay loft and lay down 
on the hay. Nanny Dodds almost found 
us there when she came out to hunt some 
eggs for an extra cake—Mother had already 
baked three cakes, but she said she had 
better bake four to make sure there’d be 
plenty. 

“Charlie and I had been eating green 
apples. Mother always allowed us to eat 
green apples if we put salt on them. But 
we had been in the orchard and the salt 
was at the house, so we had n’t bothered to 
wait, but had eaten the apples without salt. 
We thought it was the green apples that 
were making us sick. As we didn’t want 
to be dosed with castor oil and maybe have 
to stay home from preaching next day, we 
did n’t tell a soul we felt sick. 

“Anyway, we were both better by Sunday 
morning, for who would n’t have been better 
with a new white dress to wear and a leghorn 
hat with a wreath of daisies around the 
crown? 


200 


Early Candlelight Stories 


“But in church even my new clothes 
could n’t help me. The sermon seemed very, 
very long, the air was hot and close, and I 
felt terribly sick. I wanted more than any¬ 
thing else in the world to take off my hat 
and lay my head in Mother’s gray silk lap, 
but of course I was much too big to do that. 
I looked across to the men’s side where 
Charlie sat beside Father, and there he was 
all slumped down in his seat, holding his 
head in his hands. 

“Neither of us ate much dinner, but there 
were so many people eating with us that 
Mother did n’t notice. And right after din¬ 
ner we went down to the surrey and climbed 
in, Charlie on the front seat, I on the back. 

“We covered ourselves, heads and all, 
with the lap robes, and there we lay and slept 
the live-long afternoon, until Father came 
to hitch the horses up to go home. 

“ 'These youngsters must be all tired out,’ 
Father said when Mother and Aggie and Belle 
came out to get in the surrey. I raised my 
head up, but I was so dizzy I lay right down 
again, but not before Mother had seen me. 

‘Let me see in your throat, Sarah,’ she 
demanded, and then to Father she said 


Measles 


201 


solemnly, ‘ I knew it! The second I saw her I 
knew it. Sarah has the measles.’ Father 



I looked across to Charlie and he was holding his head in his hands 


thought surely she must be mistaken, but she 
examined Charlie, and would you believe it? 
He had the measles, too. 

“On the way home, with my head in 
Mother’s lap and Charlie leaning on Belle, 
we told them all about going to the wrong 
house when we went to see Aunt Louisa, 
and the boy who had the measles, and every¬ 
thing. 

“ ‘Just exactly nine days ago today,’ 
Mother fairly groaned. 





















202 Early Candlelight Stories 

" 'Aren’t you glad, Mother, that we sur¬ 
prised you with the measles?’ I asked, puz¬ 
zled, for she did n’t seem a bit glad that we 
had them, though she had always talked as if 
she would be. 

"At this Father and Belle and Aggie and 
even Mother laughed. . 

" 'If I don’t miss my guess,’ said Father, 
‘you’ve surprised a good many other people 
with the measles, too, and I bet a lot of them 
won’t be very glad.’ 

"Of course a lot of folks did take the mea¬ 
sles from Charlie and me, but the weather 
was warm and they all got along nicely, so 
there was no great harm done. 

"Some of the folks wondered where in the 
world Charlie and I could have caught the 
measles. But old Mrs. Orbison, who came 
to see us right away, settled that by announc¬ 
ing, ‘ I always say that things like that are in 
the air. No one knows where they get them 
or how.’ ” 


SOMETHING TO BE THANKFUL FOR 

It was the evening before Thanksgiving. 
Grandma had told Bobby and Alice and Pink 
about the first Thanksgiving, celebrated so 
long ago by the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony 
to show their gratitude because their lives 
had been spared in spite of many hardships 
and because their crops had been plentiful 
enough to support them through the coming 
winter. 

And she had told them how that now, on 
recommendation of the President, the last 
Thursday of November is set apart by procla¬ 
mation of the governors of the different states 
as an annual Thanksgiving Day. 

“ Thanksgiving at our house was a wonder¬ 
ful time, ’’ Grandma said thoughtfully. ‘ ‘ Next 
to Christmas, it was the best day of all the 
year, I think. And it always began weeks 
before the real Thanksgiving Day—when 
Mother made the mincemeat and the plum 
pudding and the fruit cakes. 

“ All day Mother and the girls would work, 
crumbing bread for the puddings, washing cur¬ 
rants, slicing citron, beating eggs, measuring 


203 


204 Early Candlelight Stories 

sugar and spices, chopping suet and meat in 
the big wooden chopping bowl, and seeding 
raisins. I helped seed the raisins. I liked to 
seed raisins until I got all I wanted to eat. 
Then after that I did n’t like the sticky things 
a bit. 

“When everything was all mixed and 
ready, the pudding would be packed in muslin 
bags and the cake put in pans lined with 
writing paper and they would be steamed 
for hours and hours. When they were done 
and cool they would be put away, beside the 
big stone jar of mincemeat, to ripen for 
Thanksgiving. 

“Father said that Thanksgiving came at 
just the right time of the year. All the fall 
work was done by then, the corn husked, 
lots of wood cut, and the butchering was 
over. The meathouse was filled with hams 
and sausage and side meat, and there was 
always a jar of pickled pigs’ feet. The apples 
had been picked and the potatoes dug and 
both buried out in the garden alongside the 
cabbage and beets. The nuts had been 
gathered in, and the popcorn was ready to 
pop. The finest pumpkin had been set 
aside for the pies, and the biggest, proudest, 


Something to be Thankful for 


205 


young turkey gobbler was fattened for the 
Thanksgiving dinner. 

• '‘And then, on Thanksgiving morning, 
what delicious smells came out of our kitchen! 
You know what they were! You’ve all 
smelled the very same kind of smells coming 
out of your kitchen, I know you have. Mm! 
mm! and the dinner! And every one of 
the family at home to enjoy it and lots 
of company, too. 

“ But we did n’t think of just things to eat, 
either. Father said folks were likely to do 
that. We seldom had services at our church 
on Thanksgiving because the minister was 
usually off in another part of the circuit hold¬ 
ing a meeting. But at the breakfast table, 
after Father had asked the blessing, to 
preserve and foster, as he said, the real 
spirit of the day, each one of us would tell 
something we had to be thankful for. 

“And one Thanksgiving morning Charlie 
said he could n’t think of anything to be 
thankful for except, of course, Father and 
Mother and good health and Sport, but 
nothing special, he said. I knew what was 
the matter with Charlie. He had asked 
Truman to lend him his gun to take along 


206 


Early Candlelight Stories 


when he went to look at his traps. Truman 
had refused because he had just cleaned it, 
and Father had said Charlie could carry a 
gun when he was twelve years old and not 
before. 

“Afterward when I went with him to his 
traps he told me he was tired being thankful 
for ordinary things like those everybody else 
had. He wanted something different, such 
as a silver watch, or a Wild West pony, or 
a magic lantern. 

“He said he could be the thankfulest boy 
on Sugar Creek if he had any of those things, 
and he thought Thanksgiving ought to come 
after Christmas anyhow — then a fellow would 
have more to be thankful for. 

“We were down at the hole under the 
willows where we fished in summer and the 
boys set traps for muskrats in winter. It was 
getting colder, and I told Charlie I thought 
I’d go on to the house instead of going with 
him to the cabin in the sugar grove where he 
and Truman were keeping their skins that 
winter. The cabin was convenient to the 
traps, and Truman had put a good lock on 
the door and he and Charlie each had a key. 
I wanted to go to the house to play with 


Something to Be Thankful for 207 

brother Joe’s baby and see whether anyone 
else had come and to find out how the dinner 
was coming on. So Charlie told me to go ahead 
and he would come as soon as he skinned a 
couple of muskrats he had caught in his 
traps. 

“ There were so many of us and so much 
confusion that I did not notice until dinner 
was nearly over that Charlie was not there. 
When I called Mother’s attention to it, she 
said he was probably around somewhere and 
would eat presently. It took a long time to 
serve dinner that day, and afterward a sled 
load of neighboring young folks came in and 
there were games and music and a general 
good time. No one missed Charlie but me, 
and I did n’t miss him all the time, either. 

“But about four o’clock in the afternoon 
Mother came out to the kitchen where some 
of the girls were popping corn and asked 
anxiously if anyone had seen Charlie. Belle 
said he had n’t come in for any dinner. 

“ 4 1 can’t imagine where he is,’ Mother 
said. 1 He never did a thing like this before. 
He may have met the Orbison boys and gone 
home with them, but I can’t understand it at 
all. It is n’t like Charlie.’ 


208 


Early Candlelight Stories 


"Just then Truman came up from the 
cellar with a big basket of apples we had 
polished the previous day. 

1 ‘ ‘ What about Charlie? ’ he asked. ‘ Where 
is he? What’s the trouble? ’ 

"Mother explained that Charlie had gone 
to his traps early that morning and had n’t 
been at the house since, nor been seen by any 
one since he had started for the cabin with 
two muskrats to skin. 

"Truman just stared at Mother. 

" ‘You say Charlie went to the cabin this 
morning? ’ he repeated slowly as if he could n’t 
believe it. ‘Well, then, by jingoes, Mother, 
that’s where he is right now!’ And he went 
on to tell how when he was coming from feed¬ 
ing the stock on the upper - place he had 
noticed that the door of the cabin was shut, 
but the lock was not snapped. He supposed 
Charlie had forgotten to tend to it as he 
had one other night, and so he had snapped 
it shut and come along home. Charlie had 
evidently been busy and had not heard the 
lock click. 

" ‘ Oh, the poor boy!’ cried Mother. ‘Go 
see about him at once, Truman.’ And she 
began putting things in the oven to heat. 


Something to Be Thankful for 209 

“And, sure enough, that was where they 
found Charlie — he had been locked up in the 
cabin all day. When he found he was locked 
in, he had tried to pry the windows open, 
but they were securely nailed down. He 
had shouted himself hoarse and had even 
attempted to climb up the chimney and get 
out that way. 

“A little later, when he was thoroughly 
warmed and had had a good wash and sat at 
the kitchen table eating his dinner, with 
Mother piling up good things on his plate and 
Charlie eating as if he were afraid some one 
would snatch it away before he got enough, 
Father came out of the sitting room and 
stood looking down at him. 

“ ‘Well, son,’ he said, ‘have you thought of 
anything special to be thankful for yet?' 

“ ‘Yes, sir/ Charlie answered, grinning. 
‘ I’m thankful for something to eat and a fire/ 

“Well, well, if it is n’t bedtime already!” 


14 


TAKING A DARE 


The next evening when Bobby and Alice 
and Pink came to Grandma’s room, she was 
astonished to behold an ugly black-and-blue 
lump on Bobby’s forehead, right over his eye. 

“Why, what’s this?” Grandma asked, lay¬ 
ing down her knitting and examining the 
bruise. “Wait till I get the arnica, and then 
you can tell me all about it.” 

And while she bathed Bobby’s swollen fore¬ 
head with the arnica, Bobby told her how 
another boy had dared him to hang by his 
toes from the scaffolding of a half-finished 
house and how his feet had slipped and he 
had had a fall. 

“He said I was afraid to try,” said Bobby, 
“but I showed him!” 

“And you got hurt into the bargain,” 
remarked Grandma, taking up her knitting 
again. “Don’t you know, my dear, that it 
is sometimes braver to take a dare than not? 
There is a time to say ‘no,’ and the boy or 
girl who doesn’t know when to say ‘no’ is 
often foolhardy rather than brave. I did n’t 
always know that, though, and I’ll tell you 


210 


Taking a Dare 


211 


how I learned it. When I was little I played 
so much with brother Charlie that in many 
ways I was like a boy. One of Charlie’s codes 
was that he would never take a dare, and so 
of course it became my code, too. 

“One Friday night Betty Bard came home 
from school with me to stay until Saturday 
afternoon. It was in the fall, and the nuts 
were ripe. On the meathouse floor, spread 
out to dry, were chestnuts, walnuts, hazelnuts, 
hickory nuts, and butternuts. Betty’s grand¬ 
father was our preacher. There were no nuts 
of any kind on the ground belonging to the 
parsonage, so we had been giving Betty some 
of our nuts. She had already gotten hickory 
nuts and chestnuts, and this evening we had 
gathered a bag of walnuts and we were out in 
the wood lot shelling them. 

“We each had a flat stone to lay the nut on 
and another stone to hit it with. We wore 
old leather gloves to protect our hands, for 
the walnut juice makes an ugly brown stain. 
We would lay a nut on the flat stone, hit it 
hard with the other stone, and the green 
outer covering or shell would come off easily, 
leaving the walnut, which would then have 
to be dried. 


212 


Early Candlelight Stories 


“Not far from us Charlie sat cracking wal¬ 
nuts, left over from the year before, for the 
chickens. He would crack a nut and throw 
it to the chickens and they would pick the 
meat out with their beaks. Mother said wal¬ 
nut meats were good for the chickens and 
made the hens lay, and we often had to crack 
walnuts for the chickens. But this evening 
Charlie did not want to do it. He wanted to 
go on the hill to look at some traps he had set 
for rabbits, and he offered to give me his new 
slate pencil if I would crack the walnuts. 
Any other time I should have jumped at the 
chance of getting a new slate pencil so 
easily. But this evening, I wanted to help 
Betty shell her nuts so we would have time 
the next day to play and go down to the 
persimmon tree. 

“‘Very well,’ declared Charlie. He said 
that if I would n’t help him, he would n’t 
go with us to the persimmon tree. And 
without him to shake the tree, how would we 
get the persimmons? We had an especially 
fine persimmon tree that my great-grand¬ 
father had planted, and Betty and I wanted 
to get the fruit that was in the top branches. 
Charlie had promised to climb the tree for 


Taking a Dare 


213 


us, but now he said he would n’t do it unless 
I would finish cracking the walnuts. 

“ ‘All right, you needn’t,’ I replied. ‘We 
don’t want you. I’ll climb the tree myself. 
But really I did not think for a moment I 
would do any such thing, for, of all the trees 
around, grandfather’s persimmon, as we called 
it, was the hardest to climb. 

“Charlie laughed mockingly. 

“ ‘I dare you!’ he cried. ‘I double dare 
you!’ 

“I jumped up, and so did Betty, and we 
threw our gloves to the ground and started 
for the persimmon tree. 

“ ‘Are you sure you can do it?’ whispered 
Betty. 

“I had my doubts myself by this time, for, 
though I could go all over the gnarled old 
apple tree in the side yard and climb the 
cherry trees and the peach trees and any 
reasonably high tree, to climb to the top of 
grandfather’s persimmon was a different 
undertaking. 

“Charlie saw us talking and thought I was 
weakening. 

“ ‘If you can’t do it, Sarah,’ he said, ‘of 
course I’ll let you off.’ 


214 


Early Candlelight Stories 


“ ‘I can do it all right/ I answered grimly, 
but I wished with all my heart I had n’t said 
I would do it in the first place. 

‘‘The lower limbs of the persimmon were 
so high from the ground that for a while it 
looked as if I should n’t even get into the tree 
at all. Charlie offered to boost me, but I 
scorned his help. When finally, with the aid 
of a fence rail and by ‘cooning,’ I reached the 
lowest branch, my hands were scratched and 
swollen and hurting dreadfully. But after 
that it was n’t as hard. As I went up, slowly 
and carefully, Betty and Charlie, under the 
tree, watched me. 

“ ‘Be careful, Sarah,’ Betty cautioned 
every little bit. ‘ Do be careful.’ 

“ ‘Higher, higher!’ Charlie kept calling. 

“At last I reached the top and looked down, 
and then the most dreadful thing happened: 
I got awfully sick-—sick and dizzy. I closed 
my eyes tight and held to the trunk of the 
tree and felt as if I should fall any minute. 
If I should fall to the ground and be killed, 
then every one would say it was Charlie’s 
fault. And it would n’t be at all, for I should 
have known better than to try to climb the 
old tree. I thought about the new blue 


Taking a Dare 


215 


delaine dress which I had never worn—they 
could bury me in that. And then I tried to 



I tried to say my prayers but I was so dizzy that I 
iCOiddrit remember a single word of them 


say my prayers, but I was so dizzy, oh, so 
dizzy, that I could n’t remember a single 
word of them. 

“I told Charlie and Betty I was dizzy and 
that I was afraid I ’d fall. 

“At first they thought I was fooling, but 
they soon saw I was in earnest. 

“ * Hold on tight! ’ Betty screamed. ‘ Keep 
your eyes shut. Don’t be afraid, Sarah, 
we’ll save you.’ 








2 l6 


Early Candlelight Stories 


“Charlie ran around as if he were crazy, 
crying and shouting, ‘It’s my fault, it’s all 
my fault! Hold on tight, Sarah. I’ll bring 
Stanley. He’ll get you down. Hold on!’ 

“ 'No, no!’ cried Betty when Charlie 
started off at a run. ‘Come back, Charlie. 
We must n’t leave her that way, she might 
fall. You’ll have to tie her in the tree.’ 

“Betty had on a new pinafore made out of 
strong gingham. She took it off and with 
Charlie’s knife they slit it into strips from 
neck to hem and knotted them together and 
Charlie climbed the tree and tied the gingham 
around my waist and to the trunk of the tree 
so that I could n’t fall out. 

“Then Charlie ran to the house for help, 
and it did n’t take Father and Stanley long 
to get there. Stanley carried me down to the 
lower branches and handed me to Father, and 
in a little while I felt all right again. 

“ I thought Father would think I was brave, 
but he did n’t at all. He was cross because 
Charlie had urged me to do such a foolish 
thing and because I had n’t had courage to 
say I was afraid. He said we would have to 
take our own money to buy gingham for 
another apron for Betty. We did, and Aggie 


Taking a Dare 


217 


made it, and it was prettier than the one she 
had torn up, for Aggie worked a cross-stitch 
pattern in red around the hem. 

“For a long time I could not bear to go 
near grandfather’s persimmon tree, and I 
have never forgotten the lesson I learned 
that day.” 


DOGS 


Bobby wanted a dog. He never remem¬ 
bered having wanted anything so much in all 
his life before. If he had his choice, he would 
prefer a mahogany-colored bull terrier, he 
told Grandma, but would gladly take any 
kind of a dog—even a common yellow dog. 

“It’s a shame you can’t have a dog,” said 
Grandma sympathetically. Every boy should 
have a dog, I say. We always had dogs — 
collies and hounds and ordinary dogs, and 
once we had a wonderful fox terrier. He 
belonged to brother Charlie, who loved dogs 
as much as any one I ever knew, though I 
had some claim on him, too. The way we 
got Sport, that was his name, well—you might 
like to hear about that. 

“Mother was going to the city to visit 
Uncle John, and Charlie and I were going 
along. Neither of us had ever been on the 
steam cars before, and we were all excited 
about it. We talked of nothing else for days. 
I hardly noticed my new buttoned shoes or 
my velvet bonnet. Mother was excited, too, 
at the last. She wore a brown dress with a 


218 


Dogs 


219 


great many buttons up the front and a bonnet 
with a plume. I thought she looked beauti¬ 
ful, and I think Father did, too, for when he 
had put us in the train at Clayville it seemed 
as if he could n’t leave us. He took us into 
the train and found us seats, and told Mother 
over and over where she was to change cars 
and what to do if Uncle John shouldn’t be 
there to meet us, and gave her so many 
directions that Mother got nervous. 

" 'Yes, yes, dear, I know. Do go now or 
the train will start before you get out.’ 

"Father laughed and got off. Then he 
came rushing back all out of breath just as 
the train was starting because, after all he 
had forgotten to give Mother the tickets. 

"With a ringing of bells and a puffing of 
the engine we were off, and Charlie and I set¬ 
tled down to a day of solid enjoyment. We 
had a nice lunch that the girls had packed— 
chicken and pickles and election cake, with 
apples and cookies to eat between times. 
Everything seemed wonderful! The fine red 
plush seats, the conductor in his blue uni¬ 
form and brass buttons, the rushing at such 
a swift pace through the country—it was 
like fairyland to me. 


220 


Early Candlelight Stories 


“But I got car-sick, and then pretty soon 
Charlie got a cinder in his eye. Poor Mother 
had her hands full. She’ made a pillow for 
me with the wraps and I lay down, but I 
did n’t get any better. A lady across the 
aisle handed Mother a piece of stiff writing 
paper and told her to pin it inside my dress. 
Mother did, but it only scratched my chest 
and didn’t help me. Mother got a flaxseed 
out of her bag and put it in Charlie’s eye. 
It worked the cinder out, but his eye was red 
and swollen, and we were all glad when we 
came to the city. Uncle John was waiting 
for us, and we got on a horse car and rode to 
within a short distance of his home. 

“ The next morning we felt fine and started 
out to explore with our cousins, Lily and Tom. 
The street was lined on each side with horse- 
chestnut trees, and children were picking up 
the glossy, brown nuts in baskets. But 
Charlie and I did n’t think much of picking 
up nuts we could n’t eat. Charlie did n’t 
like the city at all. The houses were too tall 
and dark to suit him and the back yards too 
little and the grass not meant to be trodden 
on. A fellow could n’t whistle or make 
a bit of noise without annoying some one, 


Dogs 


221 


and there were no dogs, except an occasional 
fat pug or a curly poodle. 

“Lily and Tom took us to the park at the 
end of the street for a walk. Charlie said 
it was n’t as big as our cow pasture, and Tom 
said he knew it was and that anyhow we had 
no seats in our cow pasture. Just then a 
horse car went along, and after that Charlie 
would n’t do anything but sit on a bench and 
watch the horse cars come and go. He had 
found one thing he liked in the city, though 
he said that if he owned the cars he would 
have nice, sleek, well-fed horses like Father’s 
instead of such skinny ones. 

“Sometimes Lily and I would play in the 
park with our dolls. One afternoon, a couple 
of days before we were to start for home, I 
was sitting on the bench beside Charlie when 
what should come running around the corner 
but a dirty, little, white dog with black spots! 
Not that we could see the black spots then. 
He was too dirty for that, all covered with 
mud and blood. His tongue was hanging 
out, and he ran as if he were exhausted, in a 
zigzag line, blindly. He was limping, too. 

“I think Charlie would have run right out 
and picked the poor dog up, but he saw us 


222 


Early Candlelight Stories 


almost as soon as we saw him. And when 
Charlie gave a low whistle, he ran over and 
crawled under the bench we were sitting on. 
He was hardly out of sight when around the 
same corner came a crowd of boys and men, 
waving sticks and clubs, and led by a police¬ 
man, brandishing a revolver, all of them 
yelling, ‘Mad dog! Mad dog! Mad dog!’ 

“There was some shrubbery behind the 
bench, but still if they came over they would 
be sure to see the dog. I was so frightened 
that I hardly breathed while they poked with 
their sticks around the low bushes that grew 
in clumps here and there. The fact that we 
sat so quietly saved the dog’s life, for they 
thought we had not even seen the dog. They 
went hurrying on and were soon all out of 
sight—or we thought they were. But it 
happened that a boy had fallen behind and 
turned back home just in time to see Charlie 
get poor Sport out from under the bench. 

“He gave the alarm, and Charlie and I, 
with the dog wrapped in Charlie’s coat, had 
hardly reached the kitchen and explained 
things to Tom, who was making a kite in the 
back yard, when we could hear shouting down 
the street. 


Dogs 


223 


“We looked around for a hiding place. 
There was none. Then Tom thought of the 
attic. He and Charlie and the dog would 



hide in the attic. Up the back stairs they 
rushed and on up to the attic. I slipped into 
the sitting room where Lily was practicing 
and picked up a book just as there came a 
loud knocking at the front door. 

“Aunt Mary went to the door, and she was 
very indignant and cross when a policeman 
asked her to give up a mad dog. Whoever 
heard of such a thing? A mad dog, indeed! 
She had no dog at all, nor ever had had a 





224 Early Candlelight Stories 

dog, she said. He was welcome to come in if 
he wanted to and look for himself. But 
Aunt Mary was so sincere that the officer 
apologized for troubling her and went away, 
taking the crowd with him. 

“ When the boys came down from the attic 
and brought the dog, Mother and Aunt 
Mary were frightened and did n't know what 
to do with him. But Tom found a big box 
and they put him in that until Uncle John 
came home. 

“ ‘Is he really mad, John? ’ asked Aunt 
Mary anxiously as Uncle John examined the 
little dog. 

“ ‘No more mad than I am,' Uncle John 
answered, and he declared that he was a valu¬ 
able little dog, too, but that if he were turned 
over to the police he would be shot. He 
didn’t know what to do with him, as they 
had no room for a dog. 

“Charlie begged so hard to take the dog 
home with us, and he was so pretty and cute 
after he had had a bath and a rest, licking 
our hands and wagging his stubby tail, that 
Mother finally consented. Charlie named 
him Sport because he said that name suited 
him. 


Dogs 


225 


“And going home Charlie and I rode most 
of the time in the baggage car with Sport, 
and we were so busy taking care of him that 
we were not sick a bit and did n’t get any 
cinders in our eyes.’’ 


THE LAST INDIAN 


“ Last summer,” began Alice one evening 
when the children came to Grandma’s room, 
“when we were in the country we went to 
the valley where the last Indians in this 
county were seen—the last wild Indians, I 
mean.” 

“Were there any wild Indians around when 
you were a little girl, Grandma? ” asked Bobby 
eagerly. 

“Well, no,” said Grandma thoughtfully. 
“But my Father remembered very well when 
bands of Indians went through the country 
on hunting expeditions. They were thought 
to be of the Delaware tribe, but were called 
Cornplanter Indians, probably because they 
cultivated large fields of corn as well as hunted 
and fished for their living. It was customary, 
during the winter, for bands of these Indians 
to hunt deer and other game in the forests. 
They would follow the chase for weeks at a 
time. Father said that as each deer was 
killed it was carefully dressed and hung high 
in some near-by tree, beyond the reach of 
wolves and dogs. At the close of the hunting 


226 


The Last Indian 


227 


season the carcasses were gathered together 
and taken to the Indian camp. 

But though the Indians were gone when I 
was a little girl, there were many things left 
to remind us of them. Old trees, blazed to 
mark Indian trails, still stood, and arrowheads 
and darts were often ploughed up in the fields. 
My brothers had quite a collection of them, 
and they also had a tomahawk that looked 
very much like a hatchet. 

“And there was one Indian left, too. I 
almost forgot about him—old John Corn- 
planter. He was supposed to have belonged 
to the Cornplanter Indians, but no one knew 
much about him. He lived alone on an 
unsurveyed piece of land and was seldom 
seen except when he brought his skins to 
sell or came to the store for occasional sup¬ 
plies. He lived as his forbears had lived, 
by hunting and fishing, and, like them, he 
had a cornfield. 

“He made few friends because he was 
gruff and short of speech and surly in man¬ 
ner. He had a quick temper which flared 
up at the least thing, and some of the men 
and boys teased him on purpose to make 
him angry. Father said it wasn’t right. 


228 


Early Candlelight Stories 


“One day when Father and my brother 
Stanley were coming through our woods 
they heard a noise like that of some one 
groaning. Hunting' around, they presently 
found the Indian, John Cornplanter, help¬ 
less and unconscious, with what turned out 
to be a broken leg. They carried him into 
the cabin in the sugar grove and Stanley 
went for the doctor. The doctor set his 
leg. For a time they thought he would 
die, for he had been exposed to the weather 
for hours before Father found him. But he 
got better, though slowly, and for weeks he 
lay on one of the bunks in the cabin, and 
Father took care of him and Mother sent 
him things he liked to eat. 

“At first I was afraid to go near the cabin, 
but after a while I got brave enough to ven¬ 
ture in with Father. Then it was n’t long 
till Charlie and I were visiting Cornplanter 
every day, carrying him food and cool 
drinks. 

“When he got better, he wove pretty 
baskets and carved things out of wood and 
made Charlie a bow and arrow. After he 
got well and went home, he often came back 
to see us, bringing presents of fish or game, 


The Last Indian 


22Q 


or maybe a basket of wild strawberries or 
early greens. Charlie and I liked to walk 
back with him through the woods as far as 
the edge of our farm, and sometimes he would 
build a fire and we would have a meal of 
some kind of game, cornbread baked on a 
stone heated in the fire, and wild honey. 

“He taught Charlie new ways to set traps 
and cure skins, and he showed me where the 
first trailing arbutus was to be found, hiding, 
fragrant and pink, under the brown leaves. 
He knew where the mistletoe grew and 
where the cardinal built her nest, and he 
could mimic any kind of a bird or animal. 

“But no one knew John as we did. As 
he grew older his manner became gruffer 
and his temper shorter. People were afraid 
of him, and there was some talk of making 
him leave the country. 

“In the winter he would go for miles and 
miles hunting and trapping, for even then 
game was not so plentiful as it had been. 
One winter Complanter brought a deer he 
had shot and dressed to Orbison’s woods 
and hung it in a tree, just as his people before 
him had done, until he should be ready to 
take it the rest of the way home. 


230 Early Candlelight Stories 

“That night there was a light fall of 
snow. The next morning some boys on 
their way to school spied the deer hanging 
in the tree and, thinking to tease John, they 
moved the deer to the very top of the tree 
and fastened it there. Then they went on 
to school, not thinking but that the Indian 
would immediately discover the deer. 

“But Cornplanter was old and his sight 
was poor. When he came along a little 
later, he saw only that the deer was not 
where he had left it, and, thinking that it 
had been stolen, he set out to follow the 
tracks the boys had made in the snow. 

“ Mr. Carson, on his way to the store, saw 
John stalking along, head down, in the direc¬ 
tion of the schoolhouse, but thought nothing 
of it. When he got to the store he would 
not have mentioned the fact had he not 
found the men there gravely shaking their 
heads over the joke the boys had played on 
John Cornplanter. It was n’t safe to joke 
with John, they said. Bud McGill, who 
had helped move the deer, had gone around 
to the store and told about it. So when 
Mr. Carson said he had seen John going in 
the direction of the schoolhouse, they were 


The Last Indian 


231 



Mr. Carson saw John going in the direction of the schoolhouse 


all greatly disturbed. Several men started 
immediately for the schoolhouse. No telling 
what John might do! 

“In the meantime John had arrived at 
the schoolhouse and opening the door with¬ 
out knocking, stepped inside, closed the 
door, and leaned against it. He was a 
forbidding figure, dressed in furs from head 
to foot, a gun at his side, a dark frown on 
his face. He looked at the teacher. 

“‘Where deer?' he demanded. ‘Where 
deer?' 








232 Early Candlelight Stories 

“He thought his deer had been stolen. 
He had followed the tracks to the school- 
house and now he wanted the deer. 

“We all knew what the boys had done. 
We looked at each other, waiting for some 
one to speak. 

“John Complanter waited, too, his back 
to the door. 

“I thought about Charlie, at home sick. 
If he had been there, he might have straight¬ 
ened things out. I was the only other person 
who knew John Complanter well and did not 
fear him. I went over to him and explained 
as well as I could about the deer just being 
moved and not stolen, and that the boys 
were only in fun and meant no harm. When 
I finished, it was so quiet you could have 
heard a pin drop. Complanter did not like 
to be teased. Would he think it a joke on 
himself that he had not seen the deer, or 
would he be furious? 

“Suddenly he smiled, and the teacher with 
a sigh of relief announced morning inter¬ 
mission. 

“A few minutes later when a group of 
anxious men came in sight of the school- 
house they stopped to listen in amazement 


The Last Indian 


233 


to a series of unusual sounds—a bull frog 
croaking hoarsely, an owl calling to its mate, 
a cardinal singing sweetly, the long-drawn- 
out wail of the whip-poor-will, the joyful 
note of the lark, the sharp barking of a 
squirrel. 

“And what they saw surprised them even 
more, for there was the Indian, surrounded 
by children, as he mimicked for their amuse¬ 
ment one after another of the animals and 
birds he knew so well. 

“It’s bedtime now, so run along and we’ll 
have another story soon.” 


A PRESENT FOR MOTHER 


“Goody, goody!’’ sang Pink, dancing into 
Grandma’s room one evening, “It’s only 
four weeks till Christmas.” 

“And I’m saving all my allowance for 
Christmas presents,” Bobby announced. 
“I’m going to get Mother an umbrella—hers 
is slit and it has a long handle—or a sparkly 
comb for her hair or some silk stockings.” 

“Why!” exclaimed Grandma in surprise. 
“How did a little boy ever think of such 
nice, appropriate things?” 

“Oh, Mother always makes a list,” Alice 
explained carefully. “She puts down all 
the things she’d like to have, and we pick 
from that. You see, the first year we bought 
our own presents to give, Bobby got her an 
iron-handle at the five-and-ten-cent store 
and she always uses an electric iron, and I 
gave her a book that she already had, so 
after that she made us a list. But Bobby 
won’t have money enough for any of the 
things he named,” she said, with scorn for 
her brother’s idea of prices. “I know very 
well he won’t.” 


234 


A Present for Mother 235 

4 ‘Well, you might all three go together,’’ 
Grandma suggested, “just as brother Charlie 
and I did once for a present we got for our 
mother. Her birthday came in November, 
and we wanted to give her something nice— 
a real store present—so we put our money 
together. Of course there was nothing at 
our store, but twice a year, in the spring and 
again in the fall, Mr. Simon, the peddler, 
came straight from the city, and it was from 
him that we planned to buy Mother’s present. 

“Mr. Simon was no common peddler, no, 
indeed. He was little and round and fat 
and bald-headed—not handsome at all, but 
one of those people whose looks you never 
think about after you know them. He 
always staid over night with us, and because 
Father would take no money for keeping him 
he left tucked away some place a little present 
that Mother said more than paid his bill. 

“We all liked to see Mr. Simon come. 
He brought Father the latest news from 
the city and told Mother and the girls about 
the newest fashions and customs. I remem¬ 
ber when he told Mother how some people 
were putting wire screens over their windows 
to keep the flies out, and how she laughed 


236 


Early Candlelight Stories 


and said, ‘The very idea of shutting out the 
fresh air like that!’ 

“He would tell stories to us children and 
recite poetry, and when he opened up his 
packs in the evening, how we all crowded 
around! 

“He didn’t show everything at all the 
houses, but he did at ours—fine Irish linens, 
velvets and satins, beads and brooches and 
wonderful shawls. 

“It was a shawl that Charlie and I meant 
to buy for Mother—a soft, creamy, silk 
shoulder shawl. Aunt Louisa had just such 
a shawl, and when Mr. Simon was showing 
his things that spring we decided on that 
shawl the minute we saw it. We coaxed 
Mother to try it on, and she threw it around 
her shoulders to please us. It was so soft 
and lovely and the creamy tint was so becom¬ 
ing to Mother that we would have bought 
it immediately, but, alas! when we slipped 
out to count our money we did n’t have 
enough—not nearly enough. 

“‘But we don’t need it till fall,’ said 
Charlie. ‘Let’s get Mr. Simon to keep it 
for us till he comes next time, and then we ’ll 
have enough money.’ 



Mother threw the shawl around her shoulders to please us 





























































238 


Early Candlelight Stories 


“When we went back to the sitting room 
the shawl had been put away in its flat 
little box. At the first opportunity we asked 
Mr. Simon if he would save it for us, and he 
said he would. 

“‘It won’t be too much trouble, carrying 
it around so long?’ I asked as an after¬ 
thought. 

“‘Not a bit of trouble,’ he answered cheer¬ 
fully. 1 ’Tis no heavier than one of your 
own black curls.’ 

“But the next day we forgot all about the 
shawl, for Mother had lost her best brooch. 
It was a cameo with a carved gold border 
set around with pearls. It had been Father’s 
wedding present to Mother, and she always 
wore it even with her everyday print dresses. 
That brooch looked as well on a common 
gown as it did on a fine silk. Mother said 
it was like some people, they were so fine 
and wonderful that they were at home in 
any company. 

“Mother missed the brooch that night 
when she went to take it off. She had gone 
back downstairs and searched carefully all 
over the sitting-room floor, but she hadn’t 
found it. She did n’t mention losing it until 


A Present for Mother 


239 


after Mr. Simon had gone. Then we hunted 
all over the house and the yard and the 
garden, and Charlie kept on hunting when 
everyone else had given up. He climbed the 
trees and looked in all the bird nests around, 
because he had heard that sometimes, when 
birds are building, they carry valuable things 
to their nests. And he searched in every 
other unlikely place you could think of, but 
he did n’t find the brooch. 

“We were very busy that summer, for 
besides our regular work we had to earn 
enough money to pay for Mother’s shawl. 
I weeded in the garden for five cents a day, 
and Charlie picked potato bugs, and we sold 
blackberries and did all sorts of things. 
When it was time for Mr. Simon to come 
again we had our reward, for safely hidden 
away under a loose board in the attic floor, 
was enough money to pay for Mother’s 
present. 

“But by this time we had changed our 
minds about what we wanted to give her— 
instead of the shawl we thought we would 
give her a brooch. We met Mr. Simon at 
the gate and asked him anxiously if he had 
saved the shawl, for we were afraid that 


240 Early Candlelight Stories 

maybe he wouldn’t like our not taking it 
in the spring. 

“‘ Indeed, I did,’ he answered. ‘ I have n’t 
so much as opened that box since I was 
here before.’ 

“Then Charlie and I told him that if he 
could sell the shawl to someone else we 
would like to buy instead a brooch for 
Mother. He said he could sell the shawl, 
but why buy our mother a brooch when she 
already had one so much finer than any¬ 
thing he had to offer? We told him about 
Mother’s brooch being lost, and he was 
awfully sorry. We selected a new brooch, 
and Mother was pleased with it and fastened 
it into her collar right away. 

“The next morning I came into the sitting 
room, after seeing Mr. Simon off, to find 
Father and Mother talking seriously together. 

“ ‘ I can’t understand it,’ Father was saying. 
And I saw that Mother held in one hand the 
cream-colored shawl that Charlie and I had 
meant to buy for her. 

“‘Oh, is that what Mr. Simon left this 
time?’ cried Belle, coming in just behind 
me. ‘Who gets it, Mother, Aggie or me? 
I think I ought to have it because I am going 


A Present for Mother 


241 


to be married, but Aggie will say it’s her 
turn because I got the lace collar last time.’ 

“But Mother did not answer, and we saw 
with surprise that in her other hand she held 
her brooch—not her new brooch, but the 
one that hacl been lost. 

“‘It was in the box with the shawl,’ she 
said quietly, and looked at Father. How 
had the brooch come into Mr. Simon’s 
possession, they were wondering, and why 
had he returned it in this mysterious 
way? Had he found it the night Mother 
lost it and had he now repented of having 
kept it? 

“ ‘ You had the shawl around your shoulders 
the night you lost the brooch, Mother,’ 
Belle said. ‘ Maybe the brooch got fastened 
in it then.’ 

“‘That would be perfectly possible,’ said 
Father gravely, ‘but how many times do 
you think Simon has showed that shawl in 
the last six months?’ 

“Then I found my voice. 

“‘Oh, not once, Father!’ I cried. ‘He 
never even opened the box since he was 
here last time. He said so himself.’ And 
I told them how he had been saving the 


16 


242 Early Candlelight Stories 

shawl all that time for Charlie and me. 
Mother laughed happily and said we were 
dear children, and Father picked up the 
county paper with an air of relief. 

“Next time I think, yes, I know that 
next time we shall have a Christmas story.” 


A CHRISTMAS BARRING OUT 

’Twas the night before Christmas, and all through 
the house 

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. 

Bobby and Alice and Pink had hung their 
stockings by the living-room mantle and, 
though it was very, very early, they decided 
to go to bed. They always wanted to go 
to bed early on Christmas Eve. Morning 
seemed to come so much more quickly when 
they went to bed early. They would n’t 
even wait for a story. They would just say 
good night to Grandma and go right to bed. 

“Why!” exclaimed Grandma in surprise, 
when they had explained their intentions to 
her, “you must n’t go to bed so soon. You’d 
be awake in the morning before daylight! 
Come in and visit with me a while and I’ll 
see if I can’t think up a story to tell you, the 
same as on other nights.” 

So they went in and sat down on their 
stools in front of the fire. Grandma put on 
her spectacles, but, instead of her knitting, 
she took up her Bible. The children were 
very still while she read the story of the first 


243 


244 Early Candlelight Stories 

Christmas—how in a stable in Bethlehem 
the baby Christ was bom, and how an 
angel appeared to the shepherds, who were 
watching their flocks, and told them about 
the Savior’s birth, and then a host of angels 
came and praised God, saying, “Glory be 
to God on high, and on earth peace, good 
will toward men,” just as we sing today on 
Christmas. 

“I think,” said Grandma, “that I will 
tell you tonight about a Christmas treat at 
our school. When I was a little girl we had 
a custom, handed down from pioneer times, 
called ‘barring out.’ A few days before 
Christmas the teacher would arrive to find 
the schoolhouse door securely fastened. Before 
he was admitted he would have to sign a 
paper promising to ‘treat’ his pupils. 

“In those days we didn’t have much 
‘store’ candy, and we looked forward for 
weeks to the Christmas treat we got at 
school. You wouldn’t think much of it 
today—six sticks of red and white striped 
candy apiece, wintergreen and sassafras and 
clove and maybe one of horehound. My, 
but it tasted good to us! We didn’t eat it 
all up at once, either. No, indeed! 


A Christmas Barring Out 


245 


“But one year we didn’t know whether 
to look for a treat or not. The teacher, a 
Mr. Hazen, was from Clayville, and he had 
been heard to say that he did not believe in 
'barring out’ or in being forced to treat his 
pupils. Nevertheless we all came early to 
school one morning and locked him out. 

4 4 While we all cried 4 Treat! Treat! ’ at the 
tops of our voices, William Orbison opened 
the window a tiny bit and thurst out the 
paper they had prepared for the teacher to 
sign, but he refused to touch it. 

“This was not alarming, as most all of the 
teachers stayed out for an hour or two just 
for fun. We played games and had a good 
time. But by time for morning intermission 
the older pupils had begun to get anxious. 
Could it be possible that the teacher really 
did not mean to treat? At noon he was still 
out, walking up and down the playground, 
clapping his hands together, stamping his 
feet, and rubbing his ears to keep warm. We 
were anxious in earnest now. The wood box 
was empty and the fire was getting low. 
There was no water in the water bucket, and 
some of the younger children were coaxing 
for drinks. 


246 Early Candlelight Stories 

“No teacher in our recollection had ever 
refused to treat. There was an old rule that 
if the teacher persisted in refusing to treat he 
was to be ducked in the nearest stream of 
water. We had heard of instances when this 
had been done, but no one wanted to try it. 
The older pupils stood around in frightened 
little groups, and some of the smaller children 
were crying openly, when the teacher knocked 
loudly on the door and asked that the paper 
be handed out to him. 

“But the paper had disappeared! We 
searched all over the room, but it was nowhere 
to be found. Again the teacher knocked and 
asked rather impatiently for the paper. 

“Then William Orbison sat down at his 
desk and hurriedly prepared another paper 
and handed it out the window to the teacher. 
He looked at it in a puzzled way for a little 
bit, smiled a queer smile, and without a word 
signed the paper and handed it back to 
William. Then he was admitted and took 
up books, but all afternoon he kept smiling 
to himself as if he knew a joke on some one. 
We felt uneasy, though we did n’t know why. 

“After school that evening my brother 
Truman asked William Orbison to let him see 


A Christmas Barring Out 


247 


the paper the teacher had signed. When he 
read it, he gave a long whistle of astonishment. 



The teacher looked at the paper in a puzzled way 


And what do you think William had done? 
In the fuss and excitement of writing out the 
second paper he had omitted the word ‘treat. * 
The teacher had promised nothing! That 
explained his smiles. We were a disappointed 
lot of children, I can tell you. 

“We shouldn't have any Christmas treat, 
for after the way the teacher had talked 
about treating, no one thought he would 
treat if he could help it, and here was a way 
out for him. The next day we were perfectly 










248 


Early Candlelight Stories 


sure he did not intend to treat, for when 
William Orbison left out a word in his read¬ 
ing lesson the teacher said, ‘Watch yourself, 
William. Leaving out words is getting to be 
quite a habit with you/ 

“Other years we could hardly wait till the 
day before Christmas. We wore our best 
clothes, and right after dinner we would speak 
pieces, have spelling and ciphering matches, 
sing songs, have our treat, and play games 
the rest of the afternoon. Lots of the older 
brothers and sisters would come to visit, and 
they would play with us and the teacher would 
play, too, and we would have lots of fun. 

“But this year I should rather have stayed 
at home and watched the Christmas prepara¬ 
tions at our house, for there would n’t be much 
fun at school without any treat. 

“It was a cold, windy morning, and Father 
took us to school in the sled. We had lessons 
in the morning as usual, and in the afternoon 
recitations and songs and a little play that the 
teacher had helped us get up. Truman gave 
‘Hamlet’s Soliloquy,’ and did it very well, 
too. And Charlie had a piece, but he forgot 
all but the first verse. We were so interested 
that we did n’t think about the treat, and you 


A Christmas Barring Out 249 

can imagine how surprised we were when the 
teacher, instead of dismissing us, said that 
we would now have an unexpected but very 
welcome visitor. The door opened, and in 
came old Santa Claus with a white beard 
and a red coat and on his back the biggest 
bag! You should have seen our eyes pop! 
Of course it wasn’t the really, truly Santa 
Claus who comes in the night and fills the 
stockings. Oh, no, this was just a pretend 
Santa. 

“He put his bag down on the teacher’s 
platform, and after he had made a little 
speech he opened it up. 

“And what do you suppose was in that bag? 
Candy! Cream candy and chocolate drops 
and clear candy, red and yellow, shaped like 
animals and horns and baskets, such candy 
as we had never seen before. A sack for each 
pupil. 

“As we went up, one by one, the smallest 
first, to get our treat, Santa asked each one 
of us to recite something for him. The 
smaller children knew verses out of their 
readers, and some of us recited the pieces we 
had said earlier in the afternoon. But how 
we all laughed when Longford Henlen, who 


250 Early Candlelight Stories 

was the tallest boy in school, could n’t think 
of anything to say but, 

“I had a little dog, his name was Jack, 

Put him in the bam, he jumped through a crack. 

“And now to bed, to bed, and go right to 
sleep. I ’ve heard that if Santa Claus comes 
and finds children awake he goes away and 
comes back later. That is, he means to come 
back later, but he has been known to get so 
busy he forgot to come back at all. So say 
your prayers and go to sleep.” 


A VOCABULARY 

(This vocabulary contains only words of unusual difficulty in 
spelling, pronunciation, and meaning.) 

KEY TO PRONUNCIATION 


a as in ale 
a as in sen'&te 
a as in am 
a as in fi'nal 
a as in ask 
a as in arm 
A as in care 
e as in eve 


e as in event 
e as in end 
e as in her 
l as in Ice 
1 as in ill 
6 as in old 
6 as in 6bey 
6 as in orb 


6 as in odd 
6 as in con-nect' 
oo as in food 
oo as in foot 
u as in use 
u as in up 
& as in finite 
u as in ftrn 


alpaca (al pak'a). A kind of cloth made from the hair 
of the alpaca, an animal of the sheep family. 
arbutus (ar'bu tus). A plant having small, sweet-smelling 
pink and white blossoms; known also as the May¬ 
flower, and ground laurel. 

ascension ( a sen'shwn). Rising in the air, as a balloon. 
auction (ok'shzm). A public sale, where each article 
is sold to the one offering the most money for it. 


barricaded (bar'i kad'ed). Filled with materials mak¬ 
ing it difficult for one to pass. 
beaux (boz). Men paying special attention to certain 
young women. 

Bethlehem (beth'le hem). The village where Christ 
was born. 

brooch (broch). An ornamental clasp; a breastpin. 


251 


252 


A VOCABULARY 


calico (kal'f ko). A kind of cotton cloth. 
cameo (kam'e o). A gem containing a carving, usually 
in the shape of a head. 

Canterbury (kan'ter ber 1 ) bell. A plant having lovely 
bell-shaped blossoms. 
carcasses (kar'kds ez). Dear bodies. 
cardinal (kar'di nal). A small red bird. 
cashmere (k&sh'mer). A cloth made of fine woolen 
material. 

chiffonier (shif'6 ner'). A high chest of drawers, with 
mirror. 

ciphering (sl'fering). Doing arithmetic examples. 
circuit (sur'kit). When a minister was pastor of sev¬ 
eral churches at the same time, the circuit was his 
regular journeying around the whole number. 
code (kod). A system of rules governing one’s own 
conduct. 

colony (kol'6 nf). A company of people going to a 
new place to make their home. 
conference (kon'fer <?ns). A meeting for the purpose of 
deciding some question. 
conspicuous (ken spik'u us). In plain sight. 
Copenhagen (ko'pen ha'gen). A children’s game. 
cravat (kr a vat'). A man’s necktie. 
cretonne (kre ton'). A strong cotton cloth, prettily 
colored. 

crocheted (kr6 shad'). Made out of thread woven 
together by means of a hook. 

dahlia (dal'yd). A plant with showy blossoms. 
delaine (de lan'). A kind of light woolen cloth. 


A VOCABULARY 


253 


Delaware (del'd w^r). Name of an early tribe of 
Indians; name of a state of the United States. 
dolman (dol'mdn). A woman’s cloak with cape-like 
pieces instead of sleeves. 

Dominique (dom'i nek'). A variety of fowl something 
like the Plymouth Rock. 

Egypt (e'jipt). A country in Africa. 
election (£ lek'shwn). The choosing of one to hold some 
public office. 

embarrassed (em bar'rast). Ashamed; mortified. 
epidemic (ep'i dSm'ik). Spreading to many people in 
a community, as a disease. 

fluting (fldbt'fng). Ruffles so made as to have a wavy 
appearance. 

furlough (ffir'lo). A soldier’s vacation from the army. 

gnarled (narld). Twisted or rugged. 

gnawed (n6d). Bitten apart, little by little with effort. 

gospel (gds'p^l). The story of the life of Christ. 

husking (husk'ing). Taking the husks from ears of 
com. 

immersion (i mur'shwn). Baptism by dipping the 
person into the water all over. 
infare (fn'ffir). A party given by the husband’s 
family as a welcome to the new wife. 
institute (m'sti tut). A meeting of school teachers. 
Israel (iz'rael). Ancient kingdom of Palestine, the 
scene of the stories of the Bible. 


254 


A VOCABULARY 


larvae (lar've). The tiny worms hatched from insect 
eggs. 

leghorn (leg'hom). A variety of fowl that gets its 
name from Leghorn, a city in Italy. 
loam (lorn). Clayey earth or soil. 
lozenge (loz'gnj). A kind of candy. 

mahogany (ma hog'a ni). A tree having a reddish 
brown wood. 

mature (m a tur'). To become ripe. 
mincemeat (mins'met'). A mixture of meat, apples, 
raisins, etc., to be used as a pie filling. 
mistletoe (mis' ’1 to). A vine having waxy white berries. 
muskrat (musk'rat'). A small fur-bearing animal liv¬ 
ing in holes in the banks of streams or lakes. 
myriads (mir'i adz). Large numbers. 

parsonage (par's’naj). The house occupied by the 
minister of a church. 

persimmon (per sim'wn). A plum-like fruit. 

Pharaoh (fa'ro). The name of the kings of Egypt in 
the long-ago time. 

pioneer (pl'6 ner'). One who goes first to make a 
home in an unsettled country. 
pippin (pip'in). A general name for apple. Here 
means “something extra good.” 
pithy (pith'i). Soft and spongy. 
plagues (plagz). Great troubles. 
plaid (plad). Woven in the form of squares. 

Plymouth (plim'wth). The town settled by the Pil¬ 
grims. 


A VOCABULARY 


255 


portico ((por'ti ko). A porch or piazza. 

preserve (pre zhrv'). To make to last. 

proclamation (prok'la ma'shwn). A public announce¬ 
ment. 

Psalm (sam). One of the verses from the Book of 
Psalms in the Bible. 

quilting (kwilt'ing). A meeting of women for the 
purpose of making a bedquilt. 

recollection (rek'<? lek'shwn). That which is called to 
mind; a memory. 

recommendation (rek'o men da'shwn). Expression in 
favor of something. 

recruiting (re kroot'mg). Persuading new men to join 
the army or navy. 

recruits (re krootz'). Men who had recently joined 
the army or navy. 

reveille (re val'ya). The bugle call awakening the 
soldiers in the morning. 

Reverend (rev'er <?nd). A clergyman’s title; one who 
is to be honored. 

rushing (roosh'ing). A plaited strip of lace or net. 

sassafras (sas'a fr&s). A kind of tree, from the root 
bark of which a flavoring extract is made. 

Savior (sav'yer). Christ. 

scarred (skard). Having the marks of old cuts. 

serenade (ser'6 nad'). Singing or playing outside a 
house as a greeting to one or more within the house. 

shirred (shftrd). Sewed in such a way as to make the 
material hang full and loose. 


256 


A VOCABULARY 


soliloquy (s6 lil'6 kwi). A talking to oneself. 

sorghum (sbr'gum). A sirup made from a variety of 
com plant. 

stealth (stelth). In secret. 

suet (su'St). A hard fat. 

superstitious (su'per stish'ws). Having fear of what is 
unknown; believing in signs. 

symbol (sim'bol). A sign. 

telescope (tel'e skop). A kind of traveling bag. 

Timotheus (tf mo'the 11 s). A man spoken of in the 
Bible. 

tithes (tithz). Tenths. What one gives toward the 
support of a church. 

unsurveyed (un'swr vad'). Not measured. 

vouchers (vouch'erz). Papers showing money is due 
one. 

wagered (wS/jerd). Bet. 

waistcoat (wast'kot). A man’s garment worn under 
the coat; a vest. 

whinny (hwm'i). The sound made by a horse; a 
neighing. 

worsted (woos'tgd). A cloth made of soft woolen yarn. 

wrenched (rencht). Twisted or pulled off by force. 
























































































































































































































